


Sweet Tooth

by gutsforgarters



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Biting, Blood Kink, Depression, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Older Man/Younger Woman, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25465060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsforgarters/pseuds/gutsforgarters
Summary: Thanks to pop-cultural osmosis, Beth has a pretty clear picture in her mind of what vampires aresupposedto be like, and Daryl Dixon definitely isn't it. There's no denying what's right in front of her face, though, and the razor-sharp fangs he just flashed at her are kind of a dead giveaway.Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but she sure knows how to pick 'em.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Beth Greene
Comments: 178
Kudos: 276





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kattyshack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/gifts), [Melissa_Alexander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melissa_Alexander/gifts).



> I told myself that I wouldn't start posting this until it was pre-written in its entirety. It isn't, but I was afraid that the first four chapters would languish on my hard drive forever if I didn't have you guys to hold me accountable. If it helps any, I have it on good authority that this is the horniest thing I've written to date. 
> 
> As with most of my longer projects, I've put together a playlist for this fic. You can listen to it [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6SN5BJZtxdJM27uxetsF1O?si=XQu_Z83cRfCTdEPqkrt7uQ).

Beth’s never met anybody who actually _likes_ working the graveyard shift at a twenty-four-hour diner—well, except for Abe, but Abe also likes pineapple on pizza, so there’s clearly no accounting for taste—and even her deep wells of patience are usually dried up by the time she trudges out the back door on tired, aching feet, but tonight, for once, she’s not watching the clock because she’s counting the minutes until she can make a break for it.

She’s watching the clock because it’s coming up on one in the morning, and table number three is still empty.

“Okay, what gives?”

Beth snaps to attention, dropping the rag she was using to wipe down the counter so it lands by her feet with a sad little plop. Amy swoops down to grab it before Beth gets the chance to, then straightens back up and presents it with a flourish, free hand propped on her hip, pretty face open and expectant and _way_ too alert for this time of night. Not for the first time, Beth wonders what exactly it is that Abe puts into the coffee.

“So?” Amy prompts. “What’s bugging you?”

It’s probably too late to bother, but Beth still attempts to school her expression into one of pleasant neutrality. “Nothing’s _bugging_ me. I mean, I guess I’m a little tired, but that’s about it. Thanks,” she adds, and plucks the cloth out of Amy’s hand.

“Uh-huh.” Amy sounds entirely unconvinced, and if that weren’t bad enough, she’s also wearing what she calls her Lawyer Face. Amy’s not a lawyer, but her sister is, and she’s picked up a thing or two over the years, enough to be annoying about it whenever she thinks Beth is hiding something. “You can drop the bullshit customer service face, alright, it won’t work on me.”

Speaking of customers, the few they’ve got aren’t paying much attention to anything besides their coffee, so Beth tips back her head and groans. “What even makes you think that somethin’s bothering me?”

“You’ve been wiping down the same two square feet of countertop for ten minutes.”

Beth wrings the damp cloth between her fingers. “What, have you been timing me or somethin’?”

“Yes,” says Amy. “So? D’you wanna do this the easy way or the hard way?”

Beth thinks about it. “What’s the hard way?”

“I go get Abe and we gang up on your ass.”

Abraham, who may or may not possess some form of superhuman hearing, immediately pokes his head out of the kitchen and drawls, “You rang?”

“No,” says Beth. “Go away.” She’s being rude and she knows it, but it’s like she said: even her patience has its limits, and Amy’s already used up most of it.

Abe doesn’t seem to take any offense, anyway, because he just shrugs and ducks back into the kitchen, whistling “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” as he goes.

Once she and Beth are alone again, Amy crosses her arms, arches her eyebrows, and waits.

Beth casts one last desperate look around the diner, but nobody catches her eye or flags her down, and she gives up after less than a minute of searching. She turns a thwarted scowl on Amy, who smiles sweetly in response.

Beth indulges in a brief but vivid fantasy of quitting on the spot and storming out the front door in a blaze of glory, but she doesn’t follow through on it, because nowhere else is hiring and she needs the money. “You’ve worked here longer than I have. Has there ever been a night where he _hasn’t_ come in?”

They’ve got a handful of regulars on their roster, mostly folks who’re kept up late by chronic insomnia or odd working hours, but Beth doesn’t have to clarify who she means by _he_ , because Amy’s face has already lit up with recognition.

“I _knew_ it.” Amy balls her hand into a fist and smacks it against her open palm. “I knew you were sulking because your boyfriend wasn’t around.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Beth says automatically, but the blush burning hot in her cheeks probably gives away the fact that she wishes he was. “He’s like twice my age, Amy, jeez.”

“So? That’s like half the appeal. Guys our age are rank.” Amy props her elbow on the counter Beth lost ten minutes to polishing and tucks her foot behind her ankle. “I guess it _is_ kinda weird. He usually comes in every night. Or, well—” She gives Beth a slow onceover, mouth kicking up into a sly grin. “He’s come in every night since _you_ started working here, anyway.”

Beth’s stomach flips over, and she hugs her arms to her stomach as if to physically contain the giddy bubble that’s expanding inside her. “What? Shut up. He has not.”

“Um, obviously he has, or you wouldn’t be flipping out about him not showing up.”

“Okay, yeah, but—” Beth scrapes a loose chip of paint off her thumbnail. “I doubt it’s got anythin’ to do with me.”

“The empirical evidence would suggest otherwise.” Amy glances at the analogue clock hanging on the wall above the jukebox—Beth’s pretty sure that both the clock and the jukebox are old enough to qualify for social security—then squints out the windows facing the parking lot. “He usually gets in around, what? Twelve?”

“Twelve to twelve thirty.” Beth rolls her eyes when Amy smirks. “I know it’s probably not a big deal, but I’m just. I dunno. I’m worried.”

Because it’s true: Daryl Dixon’s been showing up at the diner every night for as long as Beth’s been working here. He’s the kind of guy who looks like trouble, but more often than not, he’s the one who scares trouble _off_.

Abe can usually handle most forms of trouble on his own, because he’s big and broad and used to be a sergeant in the Army, but he also spends most of his time in the kitchen, and he can’t always be there to intervene when a customer decides to get confrontational, or worse, handsy. That’s when Daryl steps in.

Daryl’s a big guy, too, but he’s also exceptionally quiet for a man his size, and he has a way of slipping up silently next to Beth before the asshole of the night can even think about smacking her on the ass, looming over her shoulder and exuding threat. Beth just about jumped out of her own skin the first couple of times he did that, even though _she_ wasn’t the one he was trying to scare. She doesn’t think he’d ever do anything to scare her on purpose.

He’s a good guy. Beth doesn’t know him as well as she’d like to, but she can figure that much. Aside from watching out for her and the other waitresses, he always gives her a thirty percent tip, even on the nights when he just swings by for a quick cup of Abe’s amazing coffee, and he never leaves a mess behind when he gets up to go. Beth hates being up at this hour, but it’s almost worth it to see Daryl, and not just because he’s a good customer.

She likes being around him. Likes the gruff rasp of his voice and the breadth of his hands and shoulders, likes the way he almost _sort of_ smiles whenever she mouths off at him or Abe or Amy, and maybe she just feels this way because she misses him, but she doesn’t think that’s it. Or at least, not just that. 

“What’re you worried _about_ , though?” Amy asks, and then keeps pressing her when Beth just shrugs. “So he’s thirty minutes later than usual. Maybe he stopped for gas.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Beth says, but even she can tell that she doesn’t sound convinced. Her eyes roam over to the clock and away again. “I just. Have a bad feelin’, I guess.”

 _A bad feeling_. She knows it sounds stupid, but she doesn’t know how else to describe it. A few months ago, she might’ve dismissed it as her usual anxiety, but this is different. This is familiar.

It’s the same feeling she’d had right before Maggie called to tell her that their dad had been hospitalized and was in critical condition.

“Ooh, right. Spidey senses. Gotcha.” Beth tries to laugh, but it comes out stilted and fake, and Amy’s face scrunches into a frown. She chews on the corner of her lower lip for a second, then says, “You wanna go check on him?”

Beth blinks. “I don’t know where he lives. And I’m workin’.”

Amy looks around the mostly empty diner. “Right. ’Cause business is booming in here. My bad.” She drums her fingers on the countertop. Nudges Beth’s ankle with her foot. “But for real, I can give you his address if you want. I’ve made deliveries to his place before.”

Beth’s heart leaps into her throat, and then promptly sinks into her feet. “I can’t just— _show up_ at his place out of the blue. He’ll think I’m a weirdo.”

“Yeah, and if he’s bleeding out from a gunshot wound or something, he’ll be too busy thanking you for saving his life to care about how you got his address.” Amy pulls her phone out of her pocket and waves it under Beth’s nose, tempting her. “You want it or not? ’Cause I can text it to you right now.”

Beth waffles for a minute, then nods—but only because the words _could be bleeding_ _out_ won’t stop ringing in her head. Thanks a lot for that one, Amy.

Amy’s thumbs fly across the screen, and Beth’s phone buzzes in her pocket a second later. She sets the rag aside and cradles it in her hand, but she doesn’t open the message. She’s too busy frowning down at the time; it’ll be hours yet before she can clock off. 

Beth takes a deep breath and looks Amy square in the eye. “Amy, I’m sorry, but could you—”

“Cover you while you’re gone? Yeah. Sure. I was gonna offer, anyway.”

Amy says it like it’s no big deal, but even though she was right about it being a ghost town in here, Beth knows that it is. Eyes burning, she flings herself at Amy with enough force to rock her back a step.

“Thank you,” she mumbles, and Amy loops her arms around her and pats her on the back.

“Hey, it’s cool. You’ll just owe me one. Not even a big one. Just, like, a medium one.”

Beth laughs. It’s genuine this time, but it’s also wet with the tears she’s trying, and not entirely succeeding, to hold back.

“Nice,” says Abraham. “Can I get in on this?”

“No,” Beth and Amy say in unison, and Abe shrugs and wanders off.

Beth lets Amy go and wipes at her face because, okay, maybe a few tears escaped, after all. If Amy notices, she doesn’t say anything, because she’s cool like that.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Beth promises her. She’s already heading for the back door. “Two, tops.”

“I’ll let you get away with three if you promise to give me all the dirty details,” Amy calls after her, which makes Abe laugh so hard he chokes on his own spit, and for a second, Beth’s too busy being mortified to remember to worry.

But only for a second.

* * *

Daryl lives in a squat apartment building on the south end of town, smack in the middle of an unfriendly-looking neighborhood that went on record last year for having some of the highest crime rates in the area. Beth has fleeting second thoughts, then promptly squashes them. She’ll never forgive herself if she chickens out now only to find out later that Daryl really _was_ in serious trouble.

She wastes a couple precious minutes psyching herself up, hands clutching the steering wheel as she scans the street for red flags. There’s a Piggly Wiggly on one corner and a 7-Eleven on the other, and even though they both look pretty dead, Beth still takes comfort in their presence. If she happens to, say, spot a big guy with a knife skulking in the shadows, it’s good to know that she can always dash inside and dial 911 under the watchful eye of a CCTV.

The dashboard clock flips over to one thirty-five, and Beth takes one last deep breath before yanking the keys out of the ignition and hooking her purse over her shoulder. She doesn’t put the keys away, though, after she hops out of the family Ford and locks it up tight; she clutches them in her fist instead, wedging the serrated blades between her fingers like Wolverine’s claws. The can of pepper spray rolling around at the bottom of her purse expired three months ago, and if she’d known that walking down a dark street in a bad neighborhood was in her immediate future, she would’ve gotten around to replacing it sooner.

She holds her phone in her other hand, thumb poised to speed dial 911. She really, _really_ hopes that she won’t have to.

There weren’t any available spaces next to Daryl’s building—and trust her when she says that she _looked_ —so she parked in an empty lot across the street. She’d probably get ticketed for that if it were daytime—for all she knows, a bored beat cop might cruise on by and ticket her _now_ —but honestly, she’s not all that concerned about parking violations, or anything, really, that doesn’t involve making it across the suddenly endless stretch of pavement that stands between her and Daryl’s building without getting stabbed.

_Or worse._

Beth looks around, shudders, and flat-out _sprints_ across the street.

She almost doesn’t make it.

She shouldn’t have run. She shouldn’t have run, because if she’d _walked_ , she probably wouldn’t’ve tripped over the curb. But she _does_ trip, teetering in place for a fraught, weightless second as she fights to regain her equilibrium. Her hands are full and her fingers are numb, and if she can’t brace herself in time, it won’t be her palms that take the brunt of the fall. 

After another awful, weightless second, she wobbles into a mostly steady, mostly upright position. She’s out of breath, and there’s a stitch barking in her side, but she didn’t fall. She didn’t fall.

 _Jesus_ , that was close.

She waits for her heartbeat to slow, looks around to make sure that no one came up behind her while she wasn’t paying attention, and starts forward again, glancing down every couple of seconds to check the sidewalk for debris. After nearly cracking her skull open the first time, she’s not about to press her luck.

Daryl’s building is flanked by a parking lot on one side and an alleyway on the other, and Beth has to walk past the ally to get to the front door. The sullen orange light of the streetlamps doesn’t quite reach it, stopping just short of the alley’s mouth as though blocked by a solid wall.

The dark of the alley is so thick, so absolute, that it _looks_ like a solid black wall, and Beth stops in her tracks before she can pass it, locked in a stranglehold of petrifying dread that seems to come out of absolutely _nowhere_. The hair on the nape of her neck is standing on end, some back corner of her hindbrain insisting that she turn away, that she loop around to the other side of the street and approach the front door from the opposite end if she has to, because something about this otherwise innocuous space between two buildings is _just not right_ in ways that make scary men with knives look benevolent by comparison.

She realizes she’s stopped breathing when her vision starts to gray out. She inhales shallowly, shakes her head, and hustles past the yawning black mouth of the alley.

Tries to, anyway. Her feet haven’t gotten the memo, because they continue to stick to the sidewalk as though bolted in place. Her bare arms are pebbled with goosebumps, and her scalp is prickling so hard it almost hurts.

She forces herself to look, straining to see past that wall of impenetrable black—or maybe not so impenetrable. If she squints, she can just make out the bulk of what’s probably a dumpster, but as far as she can tell, there’s not much else. Nothing moving. Nothing living. Not even a stray cat.

She imagined it, whatever _it_ was. Nothing’s gonna jump out and eat her.

So why does she still feel this way?

She’s still trying to figure that out when a silver flash catches her attention, like light bouncing off metal or the reflective eyes of an animal. Too high up to be a cat, though, or even a really big dog. What could it be, then?

Her feet finally move, only they’re moving _toward_ the alley, not away, as she tunes out the distant background noise of rumbling car engines and _listens_ —

Breathing. She still can’t see much, but she can hear somebody breathing in there. Panting, actually, like they’ve been running.

Or like they’ve been injured.

Beth fumbles at her phone, ready to dial 911 because, yeah, her dad’s a vet and she knows more about bodies and how they work than the average person who’s never been to medical school, but she is _not_ in any way equipped to treat serious wounds, and even if this person’s injured, that doesn’t mean they aren’t _dangerous_.

She freezes when she hears a long, drawn-out scrape, like something being dragged across the concrete. One of the shadows in the alley detaches itself from the others and staggers forward, gait uneven, silhouette off-kilter because—because one of its arms is crooked at the elbow and pressed against its stomach. As Beth looks on, it flings out its other arm and braces its hand against the apartment building’s brick siding, and it’s not just a shadow anymore. It’s a person.

It’s a _man_ , shaggy hair falling into his face when he hangs his head as though to pause for breath. But then Beth must make some kind of noise, maybe one of shock or recognition, because he’s looking back up almost as soon as he looked down. He’s looking right at her.

For a second—just a second—she could swear that there’s something off about his eyes. Something she can’t quite process. But then he blinks, and she realizes that there’s nothing wrong with his eyes at all. She knows those eyes. She knows that face.

“Oh my God.” Beth drops her keys and probably busts her fingernails on the sidewalk when she stoops to pick them back up, but even if she does, she doesn’t feel it. She pushes to her feet, shoves her keys into her pocket, and half runs, half stumbles to the mouth of the alley with her hand outstretched. “Daryl, oh my _God_.”

She careens to a halt in front of him, heart slamming in her ears, panic tangling up in her lungs. She understands now, why he’s holding his arm across his stomach the way he is. She understands, because she can see the dark stains soaking through his torn shirt, so that she can’t even tell what color the flannel used to be.

She was right. She wasn’t just being paranoid, and she was right to be worried about him, because Daryl. Daryl’s been _stabbed_.

“Daryl,” she says again, and helplessly, because he’s looking at her without a hint of recognition on his face, like he’s never seen her before in his entire life. Jesus, how much blood has he _lost_? She reaches out for him, but he flinches away from her, something alien passing over his face. Something that has her skin breaking out into a fresh wave of goosebumps. Something that makes her want to turn around and _run_.

But then he blinks, and whatever it was, whatever she saw, it’s gone. There’s only a rictus of pain, and underneath of that, as if it was always there, recognition.

“Beth,” he rasps. He turns his head and spits, and what lands on the sidewalk is too dark to be saliva. “What the _fuck_ ’re you doin’ here?”

For a second, Beth just stares at him. Is he really cussing her out _right now_? Although, yeah, if _she’d_ just been stabbed—repeatedly, from the looks of it—she’d probably be swearing up a storm, too. She shakes it off because it’s _not important_ and reaches for him again, and again, he flinches away from her like she came at him with a cattle prod.

“I was—I was worried about you.” His face goes blank again, not with an absence of recognition, but with confusion. _Why_ would that confuse him? “Jesus, Daryl, what happened to you?” Never mind; emergency medical care first, interrogation later. “I gotta—I gotta call an—”

Daryl lurches forward, and more blood rains onto the sidewalk, only it’s coming out of his gut this time and not his mouth.

“Ambulance,” Beth finishes, feeling detached from herself in a way that usually precludes a panic attack. She can sense it like an approaching storm, like ozone crackling in the air, and she knows it’s only a matter of when, not if, it’ll break. 

But Daryl shakes his head before she can convince her numbed fingers to hit speed dial, something in the movement so unexpectedly _violent_ that she takes a half step away from him without meaning to, that inexplicable urge to run briefly rising up again.

“ _No_ ,” he says, more vehemently than she’s ever heard him say anything, and takes another uneven step forward. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, how is he even _standing_ right now, let alone walking? “No ambulance.”

Beth’s mouth pops open, and it takes her longer than it should to force some semblance of sound out. “ _What_?”

“No ambulance,” Daryl repeats, and is it just her—it’s gotta be just her—or is he breathing a little steadier now? “M’fine.”

Beth’s thumb hovers over her phone’s keypad. She could dial 911 right now; with the state he’s in, he couldn’t move fast enough to stop her.

“You’re _not_ fine.” She can’t believe she even has to say it, that it needs to be pointed out at all. She’d think the gut wounds would be self-evident. “You’ve lost a lotta blood, and you’ll only lose more if we don’t— _Jesus!_ ”

She cuts herself off when Daryl’s big body sways like a sapling in the wind, and she doesn’t think—she just reacts, darting forward to haul his heavy arm over her shoulder and hook hers around his waist, careful of his abdomen. 

His skin’s cool to the touch. Too cool. He needs a transfusion, but that’s not gonna happen if she can’t get him to a goddamn _hospital_.

Daryl shudders, bracing his hand on her shoulder like he’s gonna push her away, but then he sags in her arms, all the fight running out of him—and, Jesus, _please_ don’t let him pass out. She’s stronger than she looks, but if he collapses right now, she’s under no illusions that she’ll be able to pick him back up without his help.

“No ambulance,” he mumbles. That’s the third time, and she’s not sure if he’s repeating himself for emphasis, or if he’s just so out of it that he can’t even remember if he’s already said it. “No hospitals.”

“Then _where_?” Her voice breaks on a sob, and that’s when she notices her face is wet with tears. He’s bleeding out all over the sidewalk and he _won’t let her help him_. “Where the _hell_ am I supposed to take you, then, huh? ’Cause if you don’t get stitches and a transfusion, you’re gonna _die_.”

Daryl seems to think that’s funny, if the dry huff that escapes his mouth is any indication. Beth wants to smack him. Probably would if he wasn’t bleeding all over the place.

Swear to God, if he does survive this, she’s gonna kick his ass clear across the county.

“Not gonna die,” he says. His eyes look a little clearer, at least, like he’s finally, really seeing her. He seems to mull something over for a minute, then nods—more to himself, she thinks, than to her. “Help me inside.”

Beth contemplates refusal. She considers dragging him off the street and into the 7-Eleven and calling an ambulance against his express wishes. And why _is_ it against his wishes? Wounds like these, the hospital will have to send a report in to the police. Does he not want the cops involved? Was it just a random mugging, or is there more to it than that? Jesus _Christ_ , just what kind of stuff is Daryl involved with?

He’s looking her in the eye, steady and unblinking. Daryl hardly ever looks her in the eye, and she always chalked it up to bashfulness, but maybe that’s not all there is to it. There’s something in his eyes that makes her want to go against all common sense and do as he says, and maybe he’s aware of that. Maybe that’s why he hardly ever looks her in the face for more than ten seconds at a time.

Daryl blinks, and Beth gasps like a drowning woman fighting for air and looks away. Her face feels stiff with drying tears, but she’s not crying anymore. She’s pretty sure she stopped the second he looked at her with those burning blue eyes.

When she swallows, she tastes acid. “Fine.” She sounds every bit as miserable as she feels. “But it’s your funeral.”

She’s pretty sure he laughs again, just as quietly as he had the first time. Either the blood loss is making him loopy, or he has an extremely dark sense of humor. Could be both, but Beth doesn’t have the time to suss it out either which way.

“C’mon,” she says, tightening her hold on him and taking a shuffling step forward. At least he’s cooperating now, so getting him to the front door of his building isn’t as great an ordeal as it might’ve been otherwise.

And it’s funny, but she’s not even scared anymore—not scared for _herself_ , anyway. She probably should be—after all, she’s armed with nothing but her phone and a set of keys, and Daryl, while otherwise pretty intimidating, is kind of useless right now—but she isn’t. She’s too angry with and worried about Daryl to have any room left in her body for much else.

She nods at the door. “Is it unlocked?”

Daryl grunts wordlessly, and Beth chooses to take that as a yes. It _is_ a yes, because she’s met with no resistance when she hip checks it open. The motion-activated overhead lights flicker on when they limp over the threshold, casting the small lobby in a hard, white light that does the dingy vinyl flooring no favors at all. There’s an elevator directly across from them, but the paper sign taped to its doors assures her that it’s out of order.

Beth’s stomach sinks into her feet. _Crap_. “Stairwell?” she asks Daryl, and he nods at a metal door to their right. Beth doesn’t ask him which floor he’s on or what his apartment number is; Amy told her.

Daryl’s breathing gets more labored the farther up the stairs they climb, rattling around in his chest like loose bones in a casket, but it’s not as bad as Beth would expect from a man in his condition. Hell, a man in his _condition_ shouldn’t be able to climb three flights of stairs at all, even with her help, and yet here he is, defying all logic.

 _She’s_ out of breath, and her shoulders are burning from supporting most of his weight, but she grits her teeth and bears it, because what other choice does she have? He needs her, and he needs her to keep going, so that’s what she does. She keeps going.

It figures, though, that Daryl’s apartment is the furthest one on the left. If it occurs to him to wonder how she knew where to go without asking, he doesn’t say anything; just fumbles in his pocket and passes her a set of keys.

It’s dark inside the apartment, but there’s enough light coming in through the windows to see by. The front room has an open floor plan, den on the left and the kitchen on the right. There’s also a short hallway opposite the front door that presumably leads to the bedroom and bathroom, but that’s about it.

All told, it’s not too far off from how Beth imagined it would be. But it’s also nothing like she imagined, because why would she ever imagine _this_?

“Couch,” says Daryl, and together, they teeter on over to the right. She tries to ease him down gently, but he lets go of her too soon, and he lands on his hip with a sound so agonized it makes _Beth_ hurt. 

“Are you—” She reaches for him, but he waves her off. As dark as it is in here, she can still tell that he’s sweating. She can smell it. “Where’s your first aid kit?”

“Don’t got one.”

“You don’t—” Beth shuts her mouth with a click. At her sides, her empty, useless hands curl into fists. “Then what the hell am I supposed to _do_?”

Daryl looks up at her. It’s not a friendly look. “You can get the fuck out.”

Beth sucks in a breath, face stinging like he reached over and slapped her. Daryl’s never spoken to her like this before, not ever. He’s awkward and gruff and occasionally rude, but he’s never been cruel. Not to her.

And for one split, ugly second, she thinks about it. She thinks about turning around and walking away and leaving him to bleed out on his couch if that’s what he wants her to do. It would serve him right.

But she doesn’t do that. Of course she doesn’t.

Instead, she snaps, “Mind your damn manners,” and Daryl blinks like she startled him. Startled him by swearing, even mildly, or startled him by staying put after he said such an awful thing to her? She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care.

“You gotta have a first aid kit around here somewhere,” she says, and when she steps closer—there’s no coffee table, so there’s nothing standing between them—Daryl leans harder against the back of the couch, almost like he’s trying to get away from her. His face is stark with panic.

Well, it should be. He’s neck-deep in some serious shit, at least half of it his own making. Dammit, why didn’t he just let her call an ambulance? Maybe she’ll do it anyway, even if it means he’ll never speak to her again. She’d rather him be pissed at her and alive than happy with her and dead.

For now, she sticks her phone in her pocket to free up both her hands. “Don’t be such a baby,” she tells him, and crouches at his feet. “I just wanna take a look.”

“No,” he says, voice hoarse with pain and— _desperation_? “Don’t—”

But she already has. She’s gotten the first three buttons of his shirt undone, enough to see at least some of the damage. But what she’s seeing doesn’t make any sense.

At first, she thinks her eyes are playing tricks on her. Either that or she needs to turn on a lamp. _Something’s_ gotta be wrong with her eyes, because Daryl’s wounds can’t be closing already. They just can’t.

But they are. They have. They’re still _there_ , four long red gashes that run from his chest to his gut, but they don’t look fresh. They look like he’s had at least a day to heal. That, or they aren’t as serious as she thought they were.

They’ve got to be, though. He was bleeding so badly—he was trailing drops of blood like breadcrumbs the whole way here. Beth saw it. He was in critical condition. He was going to _die_ without timely medical intervention.

But he climbed the stairs. Even with her help, he shouldn’t have made it all the way up. And his breathing. He was breathing too steadily. Or he _was_. Now, he sounds a little bit like he’s gonna start hyperventilating.

Her fingers brush his chest. She doesn’t mean for them to, but maybe she does. Maybe she’s trying to convince herself that what she’s seeing isn’t real. Maybe that’s it, but then Daryl hisses through his teeth like she’s hurting him, and she yanks her hand away, looking up at him and opening her mouth to apologize.

But no sound comes out. Because. Because—

Because his eyes aren’t blue anymore, and in this moment, Beth can’t imagine that they ever were. They’re the flat, metallic silver of polished coins, and at first, that’s all she sees, all she _can_ see, until she notices that his lips are wrinkled back from his teeth in a pained grimace. His teeth. His _teeth_ —

Beth’s seen teeth like his before. She’s seen them bristling inside the mouth of a striking pit viper.


	2. Chapter 2

_Now_ Beth makes a noise: she yelps like a startled dog, and falls backwards onto her ass.

There’s no rug between her and the hardwood floor, nothing there to soften the landing, but she hardly even feels the pain that barks through her tailbone and rushes up her spine. The dread that overtook her at the mouth of the alley is back, amplified tenfold, because Daryl’s canine teeth are longer and sharper than they were only a minute ago, sharper than a set of human teeth could or should be. The part of her hindbrain that was whispering to her earlier is _screaming_ now, screaming at her to get out, _get away_ , to run fast and run far from the hulking hungry thing that wants to tear into her with those viper’s teeth and _eat her alive_.

“Oh my God,” she says. Thinks she says, anyway. Whoever’s speaking doesn’t really sound like her at all. “You gotta be _kiddin’_ me.”

Daryl’s mouth snaps shut, those impossible teeth disappearing behind the tight line of his pursed lips like they were never there at all. His eyes are blue again, and he’s looking at her like she’s grown a second head or something, which—

Which pops the lid right off of her bubbling hysteria and triggers a laugh that sounds more than a little unhinged. God, Jesus, what the _hell_?

Daryl frowns. He _frowns_ at her, which is _ridiculous_. She has to press a fist to her mouth to muffle another unsteady laugh.

Daryl’s frown grows steeper. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Oh, man, where to start? She spent all night fearing the worst; drove halfway across town in the dark in hopes of proving herself wrong only to find that she was appallingly, terribly _right_ ; and now it turns out that the guy she has a crush on is a—a—

She doesn’t complete that thought. Can’t.

Instead, she disregards Daryl’s probably rhetorical question in favor of asking one of her own. She feels abruptly, remarkably calm, the hysteria that was threatening to boil over only a moment ago flushing out of her system like water down a drain.

The room smells so strongly of blood that she can taste it on the back of her tongue.

“Are you gonna kill me?” 

Daryl blinks. She’s pretty sure that’s the first time he’s done that since she told him to mind his manners. “No.”

Maybe it’s just her, but he doesn’t sound too certain about that. “Are you sure?”

His mouth turns up at the corners. It’s just about the bleakest smile Beth’s ever seen. “No.”

She nods. At least he was honest with her. She’ll take blunt honesty over a comforting lie.

“Okay,” she says. Good old pragmatism is taking over, and it’s allowing her to put some distance between herself and her emotions. So long as she’s got a problem that needs fixing, she probably won’t burst into panicked tears. Maybe. She hopes. “What can I do to make sure that you _don’t_?”

Daryl’s grim smile disappears. He’s deathly serious when he says, “You can kill me.”

Strange, the violence with which she flinches away from that. This is probably stupid of her—because while her lizard brain has gotten a little quieter, whimpering rather than screaming, it’s still very much insisting that her life is in immediate danger—but just the thought of following through on Daryl’s suggestion makes her feel physically sick.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.” Daryl blinks for the second time in as many minutes. New record. “C’mon, there’s gotta be somethin’ else.” She’s only half joking when she says, “You got any cloves of garlic lyin’ around?”

The joke must not land, because Daryl looks _toweringly_ unamused. “M’hungry.”

Is it just her, or do his eyes look a little paler than they had a second ago? Not quite silver, maybe, but not quite their usual blue, either, she doesn’t think. And then a car rumbles by on the street, and when its headlights hit Daryl’s retinas, they bounce back off in a reflective sheen.

Beth stifles a whimper. So maybe she’s not as divorced from her emotions as she thought she was. “Yeah,” she manages, “that’s kind of the problem here.”

Daryl doesn’t say anything—just continues to stare at her with those vaguely inhuman eyes, and when Beth swallows back her rising gorge, he watches her do it. He watches the muscles in her throat flex and pull.

Her hands fly to her neck, instinctively shielding her exposed jugular from the promise of sharp teeth, and Daryl seems to snap out of—whatever that was. His eyes are back to normal, and he looks so ashamed that Beth almost reaches out to comfort him. Almost.

He breaks eye contact. Picks at his cuticles. “Fridge.”

He wants her to…? Okay. Beth gets slowly to her feet, as wary as a deer in the sights of a hunter, and she doesn’t take her eyes off of him until she has to. She can feel _his_ eyes on her the whole way to the kitchen, and she tries and fails not to visibly shudder.

She’s gotten so used to how dark it is in here that the fridge’s light half blinds her, and she wastes a couple seconds blinking the spots from her eyes before leaning forward to squint at its interior. She skims over the bottles of beer and the cartons of takeout, not really understanding what Daryl sent her over here for—will a belly full of rubbery, reheated chow mein be enough to stop him from tearing her throat out?—until—

Until.

She reaches into the refrigerator with a shaking hand and picks up one of the plastic bags of blood. It’s labeled; they all are. This one’s O negative, the universal blood type.

_Jesus_ , this is a trip.

She shuts the fridge, shuts the door on those labeled bags of blood, and heads back to the den only to stop halfway there. Daryl’s still slumped on the couch, but he’s looking right at her. She’s pretty sure he never looked away.

“Um,” she says. “You want me to microwave this first, or—?”

Daryl shakes his head, and Beth stops a few feet short of the couch, stretching her arm out as far as it’ll go. He plucks the blood bag out of her hand, and she crosses her arms and hugs them tight to her chest.

Daryl’s eyes flash silver, lips wrinkling back from his fangs. He breaks the seal with his teeth, wraps his mouth around the tubing, and drains the bag like a juice box.

He watches Beth while he does it.

Goosebumps prickle at her skin and twist her nipples into hard, tight points, and in the end, she’s the one who looks away first.

On a (slightly?) less alarming note, if she’d thought to count, she probably would’ve clocked the time it takes Daryl to suck the bag completely dry at about ten seconds. Even when it’s empty, he tosses back his head and shakes it out over his open mouth, trying to catch the very last drops. Then he licks his lips, straightens up, and tosses the crumpled bag onto the couch.

He stands up, and Beth steps back. She doesn’t mean to do it, but that’s what happens.

Daryl doesn’t seem offended, anyway. He ignores her, even, in favor of making a beeline for the kitchen, not stumbling or stopping for breath even once. You’d never think he’d been hurt at all.

He opens up the fridge, grabs another bag of blood, and pops it open with his teeth same as he had before. Beth keeps count this time; it takes him roughly six seconds to drain it.

He throws the empty bag on the floor—she is _so_ not picking that up—then grabs a third and repeats the process. He drinks this one slowly, like he’s savoring it, and when he’s done, he makes a noise like he just finished off a refreshing bottle of beer after a long day at work.

And then he _does_ grab a beer. Pops the top. Drinks.

He left the refrigerator door open, and the harsh yellow light pouring out of it illuminates the tattoo over his heart and the bloody gashes on his chest. They’re little more than thin pink lines, now. He probably won’t even scar.

It’s almost as if he was never hurt at all, and all he had to do was drink three pints of blood.

Beth’s legs almost collapse out from under her, and she moves to the couch before they can, giving the empty blood bag a wide berth.

“This is how you survive,” she realizes, and Daryl looks at her with dark, human eyes. “You don’t…feed…on people.”

Again, Beth counts the seconds in her head; he’s silent for a whole minute. “Nah. Not for a long time.”

Her breath whooshes out of her lungs like something _forced_ it out, like she’s been socked in the abdomen. Without Abe’s coffee to help stave it off, her exhaustion’s started to catch up to her, and it’s making her shake. It’s _one of_ the things that’s making her shake, anyway.

“Where’d you get it?” she asks. “The blood.” She makes another weak stab at humor. “There a drive-thru window at the blood bank or somethin’?”

Daryl still isn’t amused. Tough crowd. “Black market,” he says flatly, and, yeah. That makes more sense than most of the things she’s seen and heard tonight.

Beth shifts, then winces. She bruised her tailbone pretty bad when she landed on her butt, and it’s probably gonna hurt to sit down for the next couple of days at least. And now that she’s got injuries on the brain—

“Who hurt you?” Or maybe _what_ hurt you would be a better question, because Beth doesn’t think that your average schmuck could get the drop on Daryl and then follow it up with the kind of damage that would kill a regular person.

But whether it’s a who or a what, Daryl doesn’t answer her either way; he just shakes his head and takes another long pull of beer. Guess it pairs well with blood, huh. Like wine and cheese.

Beth frowns. “Daryl—”

“Don’t,” he says, but he doesn’t sound angry or even annoyed. Just…resigned. “Don’t, Beth, alright? You’re in deep enough shit as it is.”

She doesn’t get it. “I thought you weren’t gonna hurt me.” At least, not now that he’s no longer injured and starving.

“I ain’t,” he says. Just that, but there’s an implication there, too, something unsaid, and Beth thinks the implication might be that he’s not the only one who _could_.

It occurs to her that Daryl’s probably not the only one of his…kind roaming around out there. It also occurs to her that it would probably take someone like him to effectively _hurt_ someone like him.

She starts to shake harder. “Oh,” she breathes. “Crap.”

“Yeah.” There’s that grim humor again. He lifts his beer to her in a toast, then tosses back what’s left of it. Wipes his hand across his mouth. “No fuckin’ kiddin’.”

Beth turns her hands over in her lap. There are spots of blood on her fingers from when she touched his chest; some of it’s gotten under her nails. It looks darker than it should, more black than red.

She holds out her bloodstained hand and says, “Toss me one of those, would you, please?” She doesn’t even like beer, but she thinks the moment calls for alcohol. She wonders if Daryl’s got any of the hard stuff stashed somewhere around here, and if he does, whether he would share.

He squints at her, and for a second, she’s able to pretend that nothing’s changed; that she’s just pestering him like she always does and that he’s putting up with it like _he_ always does. Like she didn’t just watch him drink three pints of refrigerated blood, for cripes’ sake.

“You even old ’nough to drink?” he asks.

Beth gives him the look that question deserves, and after a second’s consideration, he shrugs. He reaches into the fridge and tosses her a beer, and she catches it around its long, cool neck.

It’s bitter going down, but she keeps drinking it, anyway, until she stops tasting it at all, until she has to stop for breath. She props the bottle against her thigh and slumps back against the couch.

“I won’t tell,” she promises to the water-stained ceiling. Daryl doesn’t say anything, but she can feel his eyes on her when she brings the bottle to her mouth.

She can feel them on her throat when she swallows. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> weapon13whitefang was kind enough to make a [moodboard](https://weapon13whitefang.tumblr.com/post/624499364448124928/sweet-tooth-by-gutsforgarterthanks-to-pop-cultural) for this fic, so go check it out! It's beautiful and I love it, and I bet you will too 💛

Beth collapses into bed fully dressed at three in the morning and doesn’t wake up until noon. She probably would’ve slept even longer than that if Glenn hadn’t come along and knocked on her door.

“Hey,” he says when she cracks open her gummy eyes and squints at him. Words cannot even begin to describe how much she _doesn’t_ want to be awake right now. “Rough night?”

Sitting up takes more effort than it has a right to. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she feels like she’s been hit by a truck.

“You could say that,” she mumbles, picking gunk out of the corners of her eyes and wiping drool off her chin. “What’s up?”

Glenn crosses his arms and props his shoulder against Beth’s whitewashed doorframe, the look on his face directly at odds with his relaxed posture. He appears to be sizing her up.

“Amy called. She sounded pretty freaked.”

Beth just stares at him blankly, her sleep-deprived brain doing its sluggish best to put two and two together. Amy called? That doesn’t make any sense, because she and Amy don’t talk on the phone, they text. And if Amy _did_ call, she’d call Beth’s cell phone, not the landline.

Crap, her cell phone. Beth plucks it off her nightstand and cradles it in her hand, but when she taps the home button, the screen stays dark. Dead.

She forgot to plug it in to charge last night. _Shit_.

“She said you went out to run an errand last night and never came back,” says Glenn. “It took me ten minutes to convince her that you were asleep in your room and not dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Beth’s clutching her phone so hard her fingers are starting to go numb. She forgot. She forgot all about clocking back into work. Not just that: she forgot to text Amy to let her know everything was okay. But, Jesus, could anybody blame her for letting it slip her mind, all things considered?

_Can you blame her?_ Yeah, actually. Amy probably _could._

Glenn’s still watching her, steady. “You wanna tell me what that was all about?”

Beth chews on the inside of her cheek, hesitating. Alongside Hershel, Glenn’s usually the voice of reason in their family, but that doesn’t mean he’s a pushover, and he’s definitely not stupid. He’s also got younger sisters of his own back in Michigan, so he knows a bullshit excuse when he hears it.

At nineteen years old, Beth might be an adult in the eyes of the law, but this is still her dad’s house, and Glenn and Maggie have been his proxies ever since he fell off the wagon and suffered the massive heart attack that almost took him away from them for good. If they knew even half of what she’d been up to last night, she’d be in a world of trouble.

And if they knew _all_ of what she’d been up to last night, they’d never let her set foot outside this house ever. Again.

“I’m sorry,” Beth tells him, because she is, and because it’s as good an opener as any. “I lost track of the time and forgot to clock back in. I didn’t—I wasn’t thinkin’.” All of those things are true, even if they’re only carefully edited snippets of the whole story. “I’m just. I’m tired, Glenn. Like, all the time.”

That’s true, too, but Beth really would be lying if she said it wasn’t also a little calculated—and it must have the effect she was hoping it would, because Glenn looks sad all of a sudden. That kind of makes her feel like a manipulative jerk, but she’d rather be a manipulative jerk than try to explain the full extent of what happened last night. She’s not sure if she could.

“You’ve been taking your meds, right?” Beth nods. “Do you want me to call Dr. Cloyd?” She shakes her head, and Glenn sighs and scrubs his hands down his face. “Look, I get that you’re having a hard time, but you can’t go around scaring people like that. You’re lucky Amy didn’t call in the freaking National Guard.”

Shame and guilt squirm around in her gut like snakes, and she whispers, “Yeah. I know.” 

Glenn drops his hands. The hard look in his eyes doesn’t suit his sweet face. “Jesus, Beth, what the hell were you up to last night?”

Nothing he’d believe. “Amy told you. I was runnin’ an errand.”

“What _kind_ of errand?” 

What is this, an interrogation? Maybe he should call Rick while he’s at it, make it official. “I needed—” Beth grasps at straws for a second, then blurts out the excuse least likely to elicit too much suspicion. “I was out of tampons.”

Glenn just stares at her for a second, then says, “It couldn’t _wait_?”

Beth crosses her arms and sticks out her chin. God, can’t he just drop it? “Not if I didn’t wanna bleed through my pants on the job, it couldn’t.”

If she was hoping to gross Glenn out enough to make him leave, it doesn’t work. Like she said, he grew up with sisters, and Maggie wouldn’t get engaged to a guy who fainted at the sight of an unopened pad, anyway.

Instead, he crosses to the bed and kneels at her feet, taking her hand in his. His palm’s warm and soft. Human.

“Beth.” He gives her a gentle shake when she won’t quite look at him. “Hey. You’d tell me if there was something wrong, right? Like, _really_ wrong?”

Beth’s first instinct is to snap at him. He’s not as bad as Maggie when it comes to this stuff—he knows when to give her space to breathe—but she can tell that he’s worried and she knows what he’s worried _about_ , and she wants to remind him that it’s been three damn _years_ , okay, how many more will it take to convince everyone that she’s not gonna slit her wrists in the bathtub?

But she doesn’t say it, even though the words are crowding on her tongue, fit to choke her. Glenn loves her and he’s worried, and she’s given him good _reason_ to worry. She can’t repay his concern with cruelty.

“Yeah.” The lie fits awkwardly in her mouth. She squeezes his hand reassuringly. “Yeah, I’d tell you.”

Glenn doesn’t look convinced—which kinda hurts, actually, even though his doubt in her is more justified than he knows—but he lets her go and rocks to his feet, sticking his hands in his pockets and clearing his throat.

“You should call Amy,” he says. “I don’t think she’s gonna believe you’re okay till she hears it from you herself.”

Beth nods. God, her head hurts. So does her back. “Yeah, okay. I’ll do that.” She drags the corners of her mouth into a smile that wouldn’t fool anybody, let alone someone who’s known her for years. “Thanks.”

Glenn lingers for a few more seconds, the silence growing more and more awkward with each one that passes, before heading out of Beth’s room and shutting the door softly behind him. Beth’s pretty sure he’s off to get lunch ready. That’s probably the only reason he didn’t stick around to grill her some more.

Once he’s gone, she fumbles for her phone’s charger and plugs it in, jiggling her foot while she waits for it to boot up. She’s got Amy on speed dial, so she doesn’t have to go scrolling through her depressingly short address book to make the call. She just hits a button, brings the phone to her ear, and waits. 

She doesn’t have to wait for long, either; Amy answers on the second ring. “I am absolutely going to kick your ass.” 

Beth heaves a sigh and flops back against her pillows. “I’d probably deserve it if you did.”

“ _Probably_?” Amy shouts, and Beth winces and holds the phone away from her ear for a second before reluctantly bringing it back. “You asshole, I thought you’d gotten mugged in a back alley somewhere!”

Beth picks at her chipped nail polish. She’s got dried blood caked around her cuticles, and she’s just lucky that Glenn didn’t notice. “Yeah, I know. Glenn told me.”

“Are you in deep shit? Because I’m not even sorry if you are.”

Is she in deep shit? Yes, according to Daryl—just not the kind of shit Amy thinks she’s in. But it’s not like Beth can tell her that, so she just says, “I probably would be, if Maggie knew.”

“If Maggie knew, you _would_ be dead in a ditch somewhere.” Beth makes a noise of agreement, and Amy sighs. She seems to be winding down, at least. “Okay, so what happened? And don’t _even_ try to bullshit me, alright, I’ll know if you do.”

Yeah, she will, and unlike Glenn, she won’t hesitate to call Beth out on it. But what exactly is Beth supposed to tell her? That one of their regulars is a—that he’s—

Nope. She still can’t bring herself to say it. She still can’t open that final door, because if she does, there really won’t be any going back.

“I went over to Daryl’s place like I said I would.” And, hey—that much _is_ true. Here’s hoping that Amy won’t be able to sniff out omissions as easily as outright lies.

“Yeah? And?”

“And he was hurt.”

Amy sucks in a breath. “Jesus. Is he okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he’s fine. It wasn’t, um. It wasn’t that bad.” It really wasn’t, seeing as Daryl’s wounds had completely closed up by the time he walked her back to her car. “I took him inside and patched him up.” That one’s skirting closer to a fib than an omission, but she _had_ brought him that first bag of blood. Does that count as first aid?

“What the hell happened? Did he get mugged or something?”

“I’m—I’m not sure.” That’s true, too; Daryl had steadfastly refused to give her any details. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Sounds like some serous _Sons of Anarchy_ shit. You don’t think he’s in a gang, d’you?”

Amy, Beth thinks, sounds way too intrigued by that prospect. “ _No_. No, I really don’t.”

“Yeah,” Amy says, and Beth can tell just from listening to her that she’s more than a little bummed out. “You’re right. I forgot that nothing exciting ever happens around here.”

Beth nearly chokes on a burst of unhinged laughter. God, if Amy only knew. “Yeah,” she manages. Her eyes are watering. “Mayberry, USA. That’s us.”

“Jesus, don’t even joke about that.” Amy goes quiet for a minute, like she’s thinking, and when she starts talking again, there’s a highly suggestive lilt to her voice. “So what happened after all that? Did you stay the night?”

Thank God Amy isn’t here to see her face turn red. “Don’t be annoying.”

“Well, _did_ you?”

Beth huffs. “No. I _told_ you, I patched him up, and then I stuck around for a while to make sure he was okay, and then I left. That’s it.”

“Jesus,” Amy says with visceral disgust, “you’re telling the truth, aren’t you? Man, what a letdown.”

Yeah, no kidding. Beth _wishes_ it were simple as that—that she really had just patched Daryl up in the aftermath of a mundane accident, that their fingers had brushed and their eyes had met and he’d smiled shyly at her with normal, blunt, _human_ teeth before leaning in to cover her lips with his. But, no. It turns out that Daryl needing to drink blood to live is more likely than him ever having any sort of romantic feelings for her.

Beth thunks her skull against the headboard and then immediately regrets it when a fresh burst of pain lances through her temples. She rubs her forehead and says, “Listen, I need to go get dressed. I’ll see you tonight?”

“Sure,” Amy says doubtfully. “If you don’t flake out on me again.”

Beth deserved that, same as she deserves an asskicking, but it’s funny—she thinks the asskicking would’ve hurt less. “I won’t, okay? I’m really sorry, and I’m gonna do my best to make it up to you.”

“Whatever.” It’s a dismissal, but Amy doesn’t really _sound_ all that dismissive—unlike Maggie, she’s never been good at staying mad for long. “Just don’t scare me like that again, okay?”

Beth’s not sure if she’ll have a choice in the matter, but she still says, “I won’t.”

“ _Good_. And remember what I said about not owing me a big one? A _huge_ rush came through right after you left, so consider that rescinded.”

Urgh. That just figures. “Sorry.”

“Oh, please. Save the groveling for when Maggie finds out.”

_When_ , not _if_ , because Glenn was the one who picked up the phone, but Glenn’s _also_ completely incapable of keeping his mouth shut under pressure, which is how Maggie found out that he’d accidentally walked in on Beth and Jimmy trying to get to second base. It’s been _years_ , and Beth’s ears are still ringing from that one.

“Say somethin’ nice about me at my funeral?” Yikes. That’s not quite as funny when you actually literally almost died the night before, but it’s not like Beth can take it back without arousing even further suspicion, and Amy’s already rolling with it, anyway.

“Only if you leave me your romance novels.”

Beth smiles. It’s even halfway genuine. “Obviously.”

“Nice. Bye, nerd. Oh, and if you’re late coming in tonight, I’ll call the cops for real.”

“I guess that’s fair,” says Beth, and Amy scoffs and hangs up. 

Well. Guess that could’ve gone worse. 

Beth sets her phone down on her nightstand and climbs out of bed, crossing to her cluttered dresser to dig out a fresh change of clothes. She avoids meeting her own eyes in the mirror, afraid of what she might see in them, then shakes her hair out of its drooping ponytail and heads for the bathroom.

As much as she’d like to linger under the hot spray and let it pound her sore muscles into submission, she also wants to help Glenn out with lunch, so she prioritizes scrubbing down her critical bits and picking the blood out from under her fingernails and doesn’t loiter a second longer than she has to. She doesn’t think of Daryl the way she sometimes does when she’s in the shower, either; she’s confused enough as it is, and she’s not about to make it worse by touching herself when she can’t get the flash of his fangs out of her mind. She turns off the water, towels herself dry, and gets dressed in record time.

She hustles down the upstairs hallway, then stops in her tracks outside her dad’s room. Her sleeping schedule’s all out of whack thanks to her working the graveyard shift at the diner, so she’s usually the last to know if her dad’s having a good day or a bad one. But his door’s open, and he’s sitting in the rocking chair by the open window, and it’s always a good sign when he’s up and dressed before noon.

Only one way to know for sure, though. She raps her knuckles against the doorframe and says, “Daddy?”

“C’mon in, doodlebug.”

Her dad’s reading one of his dense medical textbooks, turning the thin, cramped pages with the same care he always used when handling his patients. Beth thinks that’s what hurt him the most, having to put his practice on hold while he made the slow, bumpy road toward recovery. Not long before his heart attack, he was making noises about retiring soon, but now he’s determined to pick up where he left off.

Hershel catches her looking at the heavy book in his lap and smiles. It’s the same familiar smile she grew up seeing, gentle and kind and full of warmth, and the grief he carries around like a shroud can’t change that. It can’t extinguish the love in his eyes.

“Don’t want to get rusty.” He gestures at the low stool that’s been pushed into the corner next to the overflowing bookshelf. “Come sit with me for a bit. Tell me about your day.” 

Beth grabs the stool and drags it over to the window, then plunks herself down. “Nothin’ much to tell. I just woke up.”

Hershel smiles patiently at her. “Then tell me about your night. How was work?”

Beth flushes ice cold and looks away before her dad can notice the panic in her eyes. Outside, a faint breeze rakes playful fingers through the treetops and flutters in through the open window, stirring the gauzy curtains and toying with the ends of Beth’s hair. It’s still loose; she forgot to put it back up.

“It was fine, Daddy,” she says, praying that it sounds more convincing to him than it does to her. Good thing she never had any ambitions about becoming an actress. “Same old, same old.”

Her dad reaches for her hand, and she curls her fingers around his. They’ve both got plenty of calluses, but his have started to soften up after an enforced hiatus from work. She knows that he hopes to earn them back some day soon.

“Nobody gave you any trouble, I hope.”

“No, Daddy, they didn’t.” Which is true: she didn’t run into any trouble at the _diner_. “And if they’d tried, Abraham woulda kicked them out.”

Her dad makes a dubious noise, like he’s not convinced of Abe’s ability to deescalate a situation—which, Beth supposes, is fair enough. Abe _does_ have a habit of starting as many fights as he stops; it’s a God-given miracle he hasn’t been fired yet.

“I still don’t know how I feel about you working the graveyard shift,” says Hershel. “The late hours of the night always seem to bring out the worst in people; I’ve seen it for myself.”

Beth bites back a sigh; they’ve had this conversation about a hundred times before, and they’ll probably have it again a hundred times more. “It was the only opening they had, Daddy.”

“And you wouldn’t’ve had to take it at all if I could still work.”

Her dad’s not smiling anymore. The day is bright and clear and cloudless, and they’re sitting smack in the middle of a shaft of buttery sunshine, but a shadow still passes over Hershel’s face and lingers there. His smile returns when Beth gives his hand a gentle shake, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Hey,” she says. “You’ll get there. You just gotta be patient.”

Hershel’s smile widens far enough to finally touch his eyes, and he laughs, softly.

“Why, Bethy, that’s very adult of you.” That shadow passes over his face again, fleetingly, but Beth still sees it. “You’re growing up faster than I’d like.”

Beth squeezes his hand, swallowing a sigh of relief when he squeezes back. “Not _that_ fast,” she says. That coaxes another smile out of him, but this one’s as fleeting as the shadow that passed over his face, there and gone.

She clears her throat. “Hey,” she says. “Glenn should be gettin’ lunch together any minute now. You wanna head downstairs?”

“That’s alright, doodlebug.” Hershel pats her hand, then turns a page in his book. “I’m not all that hungry just yet.”

Beth’s stomach sinks. She picks at her nail polish, even though there’s not much left to peel off. “You sure? I could bring it up to you if you wanted.”

His head’s bent over his book; he’s not really listening to her. Not anymore. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll find something to eat in my own time.”

Beth presses her fists against her thighs. She could fight him on this, and she might even win, but she was telling Glenn the truth earlier—she’s tired. She’s tired most days, but today’s even worse than usual, after the night she had.

And the worst part of it is that she can’t tell anyone about it. Nobody’s gonna help her shoulder this burden. She’s on her own.

“Okay,” she says, because what else is there _to_ say, and stands up to return her stool to its corner. She pauses in the doorway and turns around to look at her dad, and she thinks about telling him the truth. He wouldn’t believe her, but the impulse is still there. If there’s anyone left on this earth who’s supposed to help shoulder her burdens, it’s him.

She doesn’t tell him. She can hear Glenn messing around in the kitchen, getting lunch ready. She turns around and heads downstairs, taking the steps two at a time.


	4. Chapter 4

Beth’d like to say she clocks in early that night as a form of penance for flaking out on everybody yesterday, but she’s all too aware that her motivations, while not entirely selfish, aren’t completely altruistic, either. She tries to be discreet about it when she peers into the dining room, concentrating on tying her apron strings into a perfect bow as an excuse to linger in one spot for a few minutes, only it turns out she’s not being as subtle as she’d like.

“Your boyfriend ain’t here yet, if that’s what you’re wonderin’.”

Beth freezes with her fingers still tangled in her apron strings and presses her eyes shut, then slowly opens them up again with all the grim resignation of a character in a horror movie—which, she thinks with a spurt of unease, isn’t all that far off from the truth.

 _Abe_ certainly looks at ease, mouth caught in a loose smile and bright red hair caught back in a regulation net. He hands Beth a mug of fragrant coffee, and for a minute, she’s so overcome with gratitude for the small act of kindness that she nearly bursts into tears.

Yeah. It’s been a long twenty-four hours. She blinks a couple times and says, “Thanks. And he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Yeah?” Abe’s chewing gum, and he blows and pops a minty green bubble before asking, “He know that?”

Beth’s face prickles with heat, and she takes a hearty gulp of coffee while she scrambles to get her bearings; it immediately scalds her tongue, but the flavor, and the ensuing caffeine rush, are well worth it.

 _He know that?_ The implication makes her stomach leap, but she knows better than to take it at face value. Abe’s just trying to get a rise out of her.

“Don’t be annoying,” she tells him, same as she told Amy earlier, but Abe just laughs. “It’s not like that. Daryl’s been comin’ in here forever; I’m allowed to worry about him.”

“Never said you weren’t,” Abraham says equitably. “You scared the ever-loving shitballs outta us, missy.”

Beth doesn’t even have to force a contrite look; she feels shamed down to her core. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know you are. You’re a good kid, Greene. That’s why I told Amy she wasn’t allowed to whoop your ass.”

Her laugh is only a little forced. “Thanks for saving my bacon, then.”

“Sure thing. Speakin’ of, I best get back to manning the griddle ’fore this joint burns to the ground.” Abe heads off with a languid wave, but Beth’s in no hurry to finish her coffee. The diner’s a ghost town.

It occurs to her to wonder if ghosts are real, too—if all the monsters she once dismissed as fiction are actually fact, if they rent downtown apartments and take their coffee black and tip their waitresses thirty percent. She has to put the brakes on that train of thought real quick, though, before it can derail off its tracks and render her totally useless for the rest of the night.

Amy breezes in a few minutes later, stopping in front of Beth and planting her hands on her hips. “Abe tell you he had to talk me out of whooping your ass?”

Beth sighs. She has a feeling she’s gonna be doing a lot of that tonight. “Yes.”

“Yeah, well, you should make sure to grovel at his feet later, ’cause I’ve got a black belt in Tang Soo Do, and I know for a fact that this dump doesn’t offer health insurance.”

Beth smiles thinly. “That’s okay. I’m still covered under my dad’s plan.”

“Ugh,” Amy says, and stomps across the kitchen to grab her apron. All things considered, Beth figures that could’ve gone a lot worse.

The usual truckers and insomniacs start to trickle in after that, and there’s enough of them that Beth almost forgets to keep an eye on the clock. Speaking of _almosts_ , at one point she nearly spills coffee in a regular’s lap, she’s so distracted, and can only consider herself lucky that Oscar’s too easygoing of a guy to kick up a fuss over it. Still, her face hasn’t stopped burning by the time she swings back into the kitchen to drop off some dirty plates, and Amy, coffee cup in hand, takes one look at her and arches a questioning eyebrow.

“Don’t say it,” Beth warns, but Amy just shrugs.

“Didn’t say anything.” She swallows a mouthful of coffee, then points. “Damsel in distress on your six.”

What? Beth frowns and looks over her shoulder, only to flush hot and then cold when she sees Daryl Dixon shoulder in through the door and take a seat at his usual table.

 _Damsel in distress_. Beth snorts. Something tells her that Daryl would’ve made it out of that alley just fine even without her help.

Amy comes up next to her and gives her a sidelong look. “You want me to take this one?”

That’s mighty generous of her, considering that Beth’s not exactly in her good graces at the moment. “Why’re you offering?”

“You don’t look all that excited to see him. Something weird happen between you guys last night?”

 _Something weird_ doesn’t begin to cover it, actually. Beth fiddles with the hem of her apron and says, “I already told you what happened. I helped him inside and patched him up. That’s it.”

Amy rolls her eyes and drains the last of her coffee. “Uh-huh. Well, if you ever feel like coughing up the rest of it, you know where to find me.”

Amy goes over to the sink to rinse out her cup, and Beth sighs, steels herself, and heads for Daryl’s booth.

He always sits at this table, and Beth can’t help but wonder if there’s more to it than simple preference. It faces the door and puts his back to the wall—is that deliberate? Is he, what? Keeping an eye on things?

He looks up well before she gets close enough for him to hear the tap of her shoes on the vinyl floor, and she wonders about that, too. Just how good is his hearing? Good enough to hear someone sigh from across the room? Good enough to hear the blood rushing in her veins?

A shiver walks down her spine and settles as a cold chill in her tailbone. Nope. Not going there.

She stops in front of the table, notepad in hand, and offers him her best sunny smile. He looks warily back at her, blue eyes so human that it’s hard to imagine them ever being anything but.

“Howdy,” she says, voice a bright match for her smile. She hopes she’s the only one who can hear something a little manic in it. “Can I start you off with somethin’ to drink?”

Daryl’s wary but neutral look twists into a thunderous scowl. “You fuckin’ with me right now?”

For a second, she doesn’t get it—and then, stomach sinking like a rock in the water, she _does_. 

“Oh my god.” She very much wants to crawl under a rock and never come back out, only she can’t do that while she’s on the clock, so, pin in that. “No, I—I just meant. Coffee?”

Daryl’s scowl slowly softens into his usual vaguely irritated expression, and he nods, once. “Yeah. Black.”

Beth taps her pen against her notepad. “Anything else?”

“Nah.” He clears his throat. Looks away. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing.” Beth stuffs her pen and notepad into her apron’s pocket and practically powerwalks away from Daryl’s table, heart beating painfully in her ears. Her hands are clammy with nervous sweat, and she wipes them off on the seat of her jeans as she pushes into the kitchen.

“Coffee, black,” she tells Abe, and he immediately passes her an empty ceramic mug and a pot of fresh coffee. She looks at it, then at him, eyebrows arched in silent question.

“On the house,” he says. “Tell the grouchy old bastard I’m glad he ain’t dead.”

Yeah, Beth is absolutely not going to do that. Still, she says, “I’ll pass it along,” before hustling back out of the kitchen.

She doesn’t realize that she expected Daryl to disappear while she was gone until she sees that he’s still sitting in the same spot she left him, staring out the window and picking at his nailbeds. Again, he looks at her long before he should’ve noticed her approach, and she finds herself reassessing their every interaction up till now, trying to figure out if he always did things like this and she just never noticed, because why _should_ she have? It’s not like she ever had any reason to suspect he was anything but human.

She thumps the mug down on the table and pours him a cup, but she doesn’t leave once she’s finished. She looks around the diner—things have gotten slow again—then slides onto the bench across from Daryl, careful not to jostle his knees with hers. He frowns, but he doesn’t tell her to get lost. Doesn’t say anything at all.

Beth, on the other hand, has quite a _few_ things to say. “I didn’t think you’d show up.” 

Daryl wraps his big hands around the coffee mug, but he doesn’t take a drink. Doesn’t stop frowning at her, either. “You want me to leave?”

It’s not a challenge. He really wants to know if she wants him gone—and he’d leave if she told him to. She knows he would.

But that’s not what she wants. “No, I don’t. What I _want_ is for you to tell me I’m not crazy.”

Daryl shrugs. “That ain’t really up to me to decide.”

“ _Daryl_.”

He’s scowling again. Scowling, and tapping his blunt nails against the mug, making the ceramic ring. “Hell you want me to say? You know what you saw, girl. Don’t think you’d listen to me if I tried to tell you any different.”

Well, at least he’s not gonna gaslight her. But he wouldn’t, would he? Not Daryl. She doesn’t know him all that well—knows even less than she’d previously thought—but she knows that much.

“You’re right,” she says, smiling a little. “I wouldn’t.”

Daryl snorts, as unimpressed with her attitude as ever, and finally takes a gulp of his coffee. Beth watches him do it and thinks of the beer and leftovers she saw in his fridge. Thinks of the food he orders nightly at this very diner.

“Do you need to eat?” she asks, and Daryl sets the mug down a little too hard, looking taken aback. She’s surprised, too; she didn’t mean to say that out loud. But now that she has, she might as well commit to it. “Y’know, like…to live?”

She’s even more surprised when he doesn’t brush her off. “Nah. Jus’ like to.”

“So all you need to survive is…” She casts a furtive look around the diner, then hooks her two longest fingers and taps them against her neck. Daryl makes a face.

“The fuck is this, Twenty Questions?”

Beth huffs at him. “Well, excuse _me_ for bein’ curious.”

Daryl’s lips twist up at the corners, but Beth thinks it’d be a real stretch to call what he’s doing with his mouth a smile. “Ain’t you ever heard the one about the cat?”

Beth goes very, very still. Still as a rabbit, still as a deer. “I thought you said you weren’t gonna kill me.”

Daryl’s eyes widen fractionally. His pupils are dilated from the diner’s harsh fluorescent lights, but the thin rims of color that encircle them are blue, not silver.

“I ain’t,” he says, and Beth believes him. One of the few things she knows for certain about Daryl is that he has no guile to speak of. If he says he’s not going to kill her, then he’s not going to kill her.

Granted, he also said that he wasn’t _sure_ he wouldn’t kill her. Of course, he was wounded and hungry at the time, and right now, he doesn’t appear to be either of those things. He’s not looking at her throat—if anything, Beth thinks he might be going out of his way not to look at it. He’s not gonna hurt her on purpose.

No. Not on purpose.

This time, Daryl’s the one who breaks the heavy silence. “I’ll tell ya what you wanna know. Figure I owe you that much.” When Beth gives him a blank look, he elaborates, “Saved my ass, didn’t you?”

Oh. That. Beth looks at her hands, at the colorful stack of bracelets on her wrist and her fingers tracing the beat-up table. “You would’ve been fine without me.”

“Doubt it.” Beth looks up when he says that, and he looks back at her, looks her right in the eye and doesn’t blink once. That feeling from before starts creeping up on her again, the one she got the last time he held her gaze for this long without blinking. She wants to agree with whatever he says. She wants to _do_ whatever he says.

But no. That’s not right. That’s not _true_. She squeezes her hands into fists, and when her nails cut into the fleshy parts of her palms, the shock of pain’s enough to snap her out of it, whatever _it_ is. She blinks, and Daryl blinks, too.

Her underarms are damp with sweat, and her clenched hands are shaking. She doesn’t look at him when she asks, “Did you do that on purpose?”

“Nah.” He’s tapping his nails against his mug again. He’s hardly drunk any of his coffee; it’s probably gonna go cold soon. “You’d know if I was.”

The implication being that she wouldn’t be _able_ to fight it if he was. Great. “Well, can you do me a favor and blink more often, at least?”

She looks him in the eye when she makes her request—a show of trust, maybe—so she sees it when he nods.

She runs her tongue over her chapped lips, but her mouth’s so dry it doesn’t do her much good. “So that’s—one of the things you can do?”

He nods, curtly. His jaw’s clenched just as tightly as her fists were.

“What else can you do?”

The scowl from earlier slams back into place. “Don’t turn into a fuckin’ bat, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

Well, she can’t honestly say the thought hadn’t occurred to her. She’s also pretty sure he’s dodging the question. “You _said_ you’d tell me what I wanted to know.”

She’s being a little demanding here, but given that Daryl probably came real close to _eating_ her last night, she thinks she’s entitled.

Daryl’s eyes flick from left to right. “Not right now. Don’t want nobody overhearing this shit.”

Beth looks around, too. She doesn’t see Amy anywhere, and the only other customers are out of earshot and half asleep besides.

“Even if they _did_ overhear,” she reasons, “they’d probably just assume that we’re putting together some kinda D&D campaign.”

“Some kinda _what_?”

“Never mind,” Beth says quickly. “I’m just sayin’, I don’t think you need to worry about anybody finding out.”

Daryl’s lips form a thin, bloodless line. “Ain’t them I’m worried about.”

Beth’s arms immediately break out into goosebumps, and she glances out the window like she expects to see something sinister lurking in the shadows—which she kind of does.

“ _Oh_.” It’s a bit of an underreaction, but she can’t think of anything better to say. She’s not the protagonist of a paranormal romance novel, and she doesn’t have a witty retort for every occasion. “Then when?”

“Tomorrow, I guess. If you’re free.”

When she’s not working, she’s pretty much always free. “What time?”

Daryl shrugs. “Ten work for you?”

“That’s cutting it kinda close to my shift,” Beth says doubtfully. She’s bursting with questions, and she doesn’t know how long it’ll take him to answer all of them.

Daryl _almost_ smiles. “Not ten at night. Ten in the mornin’.”

Her mouth pops open, but no sound comes out. She snaps it back shut, processes for a minute, then says, “But what about the…you know?”

“The sun? You can say it, y’know. It ain’t a dirty word.” Beth just scowls at him, and that almost smile flickers like it wants to become a real smile. Doesn’t quite make it, though. “It don’t hurt us.”

 _Us_. Hoo, boy. “It…doesn’t?”

“Nah. Jus’ makes us groggy, mostly. Hurts our eyes a lil’.”

So she’s not safe even during the day, is what he’s saying. Not wanting to think too hard about _that_ , she distracts herself by needling him. “Lemme guess. You got a real impressive collection of sunglasses stashed away somewhere?”

Daryl rolls his eyes. “Real funny, smartass. I’m bustin’ a fuckin’ gut over here.”

“I’ll be here all week,” she says. Daryl rolls his eyes again—he’s gonna detach a retina at this rate—and he’s just acting so _normal_ , like nothing’s actually changed, that she impulsively reaches across the table and takes his hand in hers.

He jumps when she touches him, like she pressed a live wire to his skin, but he doesn’t break her hold. He just looks at her with wide, startled eyes, and this time, that awful feeling from before, like she was a puppet on the end of someone else’s string, doesn’t rise up to take her. She looks him right in the eyes, but all she sees is him.

Maybe she’s building up immunity or something.

She gives his hand a gentle squeeze. His palm and fingers are rough with the calluses she’s spent far too much of her time fantasizing about, and his skin’s warm from the coffee mug. She wants to hold on to him all night, for as long as he’ll let her, and that’s when she realizes nothing _has_ changed, at least not on her end. She’s just as gone on him as ever, and the fact that he needs to drink blood to live—if _live_ ’s the right word for it—hasn’t put much of a dent her feelings. 

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but she sure knows how to pick ’em, huh?

“Thank you,” she says, quietly but fervently, and Daryl’s face crumples into a frown. His fingers twitch.

“Hell you thankin’ me for?”

She shrugs. “For bein’ honest with me.” Smiles. “For agreeing to answer my questions. I have a lot, y’know. Answering them all probably won’t be a walk in the park.”

Daryl scoffs, but she’s pretty sure that he’s blushing a little, too. “Didn’t know any other way of gettin’ you off my ass.”

Beth just keeps on smiling at him. She feels weirdly giddy, but that could just be the exhaustion. “If that’s what you need to tell yourself.” 

Yeah, he’s definitely blushing. Glaring at her, too, and using his free hand to flip her off. He still doesn’t break her hold on him, though. His fingers twitch again, almost like they want to curl around hers.

“Hey! No flirting on the job!”

Beth jumps and retracts her hand, cheeks stinging. Amy’s poked her head out of the kitchen to scowl at them like they’re a couple of naughty five-year-olds, but as soon as Beth meets her eyes, that scowl turns into a smirk. She clucks her tongue and retreats, but the damage is done. Whatever moment Beth and Daryl might’ve been having, it’s dead and buried now.

Except _that_ makes her think of creaking coffin lids and silvery old movies starring Bela Lugosi, and she has to physically bite her tongue to stop herself from asking Daryl about his sleeping arrangements. He said the sunlight makes him groggy, so that must mean he sleeps, right?

She shakes herself out of _that_ mental spiral and grins sheepishly at Daryl, who’s gone back to picking at his nailbeds. The blush has mostly faded from his face, but the tips of his ears are still bright red.

“Ignore her,” Beth says. “She’s just tryin’ to get a rise out of us.”

Daryl frowns at his nails. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Beth stands up, only remembering at the last second to take the coffee pot with her. “So I’ll just—”

“Uh-huh.”

She shifts from foot to foot, brimming with nervous energy. “You want a refill?” The stuff in the pot’s probably gone cool by now; she’ll have to ask Abe for a fresh batch.

For a second, Daryl looks like he’s gonna say no. He doesn’t. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Alright.” She starts to go, only to swing back around and say, “Wait, shoot, I need to give you my—”

Daryl’s already passing her a napkin; there’s a phone number scrawled on it.

Beth cradles the napkin like it’s made of pure gold, but her delight is tempered by irony. All these months of wanting Daryl’s number, and it just figures that _this_ is what it takes for him to give it to her.

She folds the napkin up and sticks it in her pocket. “So I’ll, uh. I’ll text you?”

Daryl sticks his thumbnail in his mouth and gnaws on it. His teeth are dull, as human as his eyes. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

Oh, God. No way can Maggie catch wind of this. Beth’ll have to make sure she’s miles away from the farm by the time Daryl shows up. “Sure. Okay. I’ll—go get your refill.”

Amy passes her on her way to the kitchen, balancing stacks of plates. Beth sticks her tongue out at her, but she just laughs, unrepentant.

Beth holds the coffee pot out to Abraham. “Refill?”

Abe takes it from her, but he doesn’t bring her a fresh pot right away. Nah, he’s gotta be a pain in her butt first.

He looks over her shoulder, toward the dining room. Toward Daryl. For a split second, Beth wonders if he’s watching her, but then Abe has to go and ruin her moment. 

“Not your boyfriend, huh?”

Beth throws her notepad at him. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains references to suicide and suicide ideation.

Daryl told her point blank that the sun doesn’t hurt him, but seeing his truck rumble up the driveway in broad daylight still gives Beth a bad case of cognitive dissonance, and not just because it clashes with everything pop culture’s taught her about people like him. No, not just that, because as often as she’s fantasized about Daryl swinging by her house to pick her up for a date, she never once thought it’d _actually happen_.

Not that this is a date. Because it isn’t. Obviously.

Her phone buzzes against her hip, startling her, and she swears under her breath and jumps guiltily back from the window, then swears again when she unearths it from her pocket and sees Daryl’s name flashing across the screen. Right. He said he’d call her when he got here, didn’t he? She forgot.

She accepts the call before it can go to voicemail and tries to play it cool. “Hi? Hello? Hi.”

Tries, and fails _cringingly_ hard. Daryl must think so too, going off the beat of awkward silence that follows. “I’m here.”

“Yeah, I know.” _Crap_. Way to tip him off to the fact that she was watching him through the window like a total creep. “I mean, I heard your truck in the driveway.” Which is, you know. Technically true.

If Daryl saw her in the window—because, let’s be real, that would just be her luck—he doesn’t call her out on her lie. “Just getcha ass out here,” he says, and hangs up.

Beth frowns at her phone’s screen, which is blurry with nervous sweat and the oils from her skin, then wipes it off, sticks it in her pocket, and hustles down the hallway.

“I’m headin’ out,” she calls, addressing the house in general, and books it out the front door before Glenn or her dad can ask her _where_ she’s headed, or who with. If Maggie gets back from grocery shopping and texts her asking where she’s gone, Beth’ll just tell her she’s at Amy’s. It’s not like Maggie would have any reason to doubt her.

Beth’s insides clench with guilt, then clench again for a different reason entirely when she gets a good look at Daryl. What exactly that reason is, she can’t really say—whether it’s anxiety or fear or just how good he looks in a pair of Ray-bans. Could be all three. Hell, it’s _probably_ all three.

Daryl doesn’t get out of the truck, but he does lean across the front seat to unlock the passenger side door from the inside. Beth throws a wary look over her shoulder, but no one bursts out of the house to demand where the hell she thinks she’s going with a man twice her age, so she takes a steadying breath and hurries the rest of the way down the dirt drive, cowboy boots kicking up clouds of red Georgia dust that linger in the air like swarms of flies.

She braces a foot on the running board and boosts herself into the cab with a huff, but it’s not until she’s yanked the door shut behind her that she realizes just how alone they are, even with the farmhouse right there. How alone, and how close.

Beth glances at Daryl sidelong, fingers twisting in the hem of her shirt. His lenses are black and opaque, and she can’t see much more than the vague shapes of his eyes behind them, but she can _feel_ him looking at her, even if she can’t tell whether he’s looking at her face or her throat. She swallows convulsively—and Daryl’s hands tighten on the steering wheel.

Beth doesn’t move. She barely even breathes. After a tense stretch of silence that lasts long enough to make her reconsider the wisdom of this venture, Daryl looks away, puts the truck into gear, and mumbles, “Buckle up.”

Beth jumps like she’s been shocked, then shrugs off her backpack and dumps it in the footwell before scrambling to buckle her seatbelt. Daryl’s not wearing his, but she doesn’t say anything about it. She suspects a header through the windshield wouldn’t do much more than give him a mild concussion.

She clears her throat. “Uh, hey. You, um, you sleep well?” Her eyes snag on the Styrofoam mug nestled in the cup holder, and her nostrils flare as she catches a belated whiff of coffee. “…Guess not.” 

Daryl shrugs, tilts the steering wheel, and does a U-turn in the driveway, pointing the truck toward the road. “Ain’t for me.”

“Then who _is_ it for?”

Daryl makes an impatient noise. “The fuckin’ Pope, Christ, who the hell you _think_?”

Beth crosses her arms. “Don’t be rude.”

Daryl scowls and leans a little harder on the gas. “Jesus Christ. Drink it or don’t, I don’t give a shit.”

Beth almost _doesn’t_ drink it, just out of spite—but Daryl did go out of his way to do something nice for her, even if he had to ruin it by being a grouch, and anyway, she _could_ use the caffeine. She picks up the cup, pops off the lid, and blows on the steaming coffee before taking a sip. As soon as it hits her tongue, rich and sugary and a little scalding, she slumps back against her seat with a contented sigh. Now _that’s_ more like it.

“You stopped at the diner.”

“Uh-huh.” Daryl braces an elbow against the door and brings his hand to his mouth. Bites down on his thumbnail. “Woulda gotten you a bagel or somethin’, but I didn’t know if you ate already.”

Having feelings for someone like Daryl is a bad idea. She knows it is, but, Jesus, he’s making it hard to remember why.

“I have,” she admits. “But it was sweet of you to think of me.”

Daryl scoffs and turns the truck onto the road. “Ain’t sweet.”

She elects to ignore that. “Thanks for the coffee.”

Daryl’s shoulders hunch. “Yeah. Sure.”

The tips of his ears are flushed, and Beth wonders with a queasy jolt if _he’s_ eaten yet. Is that his blood turning his skin red, or someone else’s? Just how exactly does this stuff work? She could ask him, but does he even know? Most folks don’t think too hard about how their digestion tracts work unless they’re a gastroenterologist, so why should _he_?

And, actually, on second thought? She’s not sure she wants to know. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

Instead, she asks him something that’s much less personal and far more pressing. “Where’re we headed?”

“The city morgue.”

Beth nearly spills her coffee. “You’re not— _crap_ —you’re not serious.”

Daryl’s lips twitch. “Nah. But you thought I was.”

He’s very quickly burning through the good will he earned when he brought her coffee. “You can’t prove that.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Daryl doesn’t so much pause at the approaching stop sign as slow down a little, and Beth’s pretty sure he only did that for her sake. “Just—settle the hell down, alright? Ain’t takin’ you nowhere bad.”

“I didn’t think you were. I was just curious, that’s all.” 

Daryl doesn’t bring up the one about the cat again, although she can tell from the set of his mouth that he kind of wants to. Instead, he starts fiddling with the radio, twirling the dial until he lands on a classic rock station. Beth smiles when she hears Bruce Springsteen, a little distorted by static but otherwise unmistakable, then gets sidetracked wondering if Daryl was alive when Springsteen was just starting out, before he became a household name.

Just how old is Daryl? Is that a question she’s allowed to ask, or would it be rude?

She concludes that it almost certainly would be, only this is Daryl, so he might not mind all that much. She probably should work on brainstorming what she _does_ want to ask him, though, so she settles back against her seat and tries to focus on that, the music on the radio fading into the background as she gets lost in her own head.

The smell of coffee’s still strong in her nostrils, overwhelming the faint, sour tang of tobacco smoke that sticks to the leather upholstery, but neither smell’s as strong as it could be, because all the windows are rolled down. Daryl’s driving faster now that they’ve made it to the highway, so that the wind whips into the cab and snags in Beth’s hair. She tries to tuck the loose strands behind her ears but gives up when they immediately break free again. No point in fighting the wind. She takes another sip of coffee, but keeps her eyes shut.

If she’d opened her eyes—if she’d been paying any attention at all to her surroundings—she probably would’ve guessed their destination long before they arrived, because she’s lived in this town her whole life, and there’s not a square mile of it that she isn’t at least passingly familiar with. As it is, she doesn’t figure it out until the truck jolts over a speed bump and startles her into finally opening her eyes.

Daryl’s pulling into a small gravel parking lot, beyond which unfurls sloping green hills and wild copses of trees that’ve been mostly left to their own devices, branches tangling together like interlocked fingers and forming natural pavilions. In the distance, a pond shimmers in the sunlight, and nearby, children swarm a wooden playground set that Beth herself used to frequent when she wasn’t exploring her family’s own sprawling tracts of land.

She knows this park; it used to be private property before the wealthy family that owned it donated it to the state of Georgia. Their house still stands at the highest point of the park, open to day tours and surrounded by a chain-link fence. 

Beth sits up straighter and slants Daryl a curious look, but if he feels her watching him, he doesn’t react in any way. He just steers the truck into an empty slot and puts it in park.

The radio station’s cut to commercials, so Beth reaches over and turns the volume down. Through the open windows, she can hear the kids on the playground laughing and shouting, and it’s such a _normal_ sound that it gives her another jolt of unreality. How can a world where kids burn their legs on hot metal slides and hang upside down from the monkey bars be the same world where the guy you’ve been crushing on for months is a—

Nope. Still can’t say it. She unbuckles her seatbelt and folds her hands in her lap, ’cause she needs to hang on to _something,_ and right now, all she’s got is herself.

“Why’d you bring me here?” It’s not one of the questions she was planning on asking, but she still figures the answer’s worth knowing. She smiles slightly, tries to inject a bit of levity into the tense atmosphere. “You wanted to go for a walk or somethin’?”

It’s mostly a joke, but if he really does want to take a walk around the park, Beth’s not gonna say no. She enjoys going for walks, especially when she’s with someone she likes.

But Daryl shrugs and says, “Nah.” Just that. Not super illuminating.

“Then why…?” Beth trails off before she can finish asking the question, because something’s niggling at the back of her brain. She looks around, through the windshield, out the open windows. Looks at all the people—not just the kids, but their parents. At the people jogging down the dirt and gravel paths that snake through the park like rivers, some with dogs, some without. It’s a nice day, and it’s not as hot as it’s gonna get later in the afternoon, so there’s lots of them.

“We’re out in the open,” she says. She looks at Daryl, who’s still hanging on to the steering wheel even though the truck’s in park, tapping his thumbs agitatedly against it. “That’s on purpose, isn’t it?”

He shrugs, again. His thumbs tap faster, so they’re almost a blur. “More people,” he says, “more witnesses.”

Her hands clench in her lap. She shouldn’t ask. She does anyway. “More witnesses to _what_?”

He looks at her, finally. He looks at her through those opaque lenses, and even though she still can’t see his eyes, she knows what’s in them. She can _feel_ what’s in them.

Hunger.

She doesn’t flinch or cower back against the door. Doesn’t fumble for the handle and hop out and _run_ , even though there’s a part of her—the part that remembers what it was like to _not_ be at the top of the food chain—that very badly wants to. She decided three years ago that she didn’t wanna die, and if she ever changes her mind, that’ll be _her_ choice, on _her_ terms. Not anybody else’s.

So she sticks out her chin even though doing so exposes her throat, even though she can feel those unseen eyes on her jugular like the brush of callused fingertips, and she says, “Are you afraid you’ll hurt me, after all?”

Daryl’s lips tighten in a grimace, but he doesn’t lie to her. He nods, once.

“You won’t,” Beth says, sounding a lot more confident than she actually _feels_ , but, hey. Fake it till you make it, right? That’s what Maggie always says.

Daryl must not subscribe to the same philosophy, though, because his grimace twists into a bitter half smile. “Yeah? How you know that?”

“I just do.” Her determination to will a sense of confidence into existence must be working, because it feels like the truth. “You don’t wanna hurt me, so you won’t.”

“Never wanted to hurt the others.” The bitter smile disappears, dead seriousness taking its place. “Still did.”

 _The others_. Beth licks her lips and tries to suppress the thrill she gets when she feels him watching her do it. Now is _not_ the time, Jesus. “Was it—was it harder, before? When you were, um. Younger?” 

He nods, slowly. She thinks he might be looking her in the eye now, but it’s not like it was before. She doesn’t feel like she’s drowning. Maybe it’s the lenses. Maybe it’s easier for him this way, too.

“Yeah. It, uh, takes time. Learnin’ how to rein it in, I mean.” He snorts. “Lotta us don’t bother.”

“But you did.”

Pointing that out doesn’t appear to make him feel any better. “Ain’t like I never fell off the wagon before.”

 _Fell off the wagon_. Is that what his hunger for fresh blood feels like? An addiction? Beth knows a little bit about that, what with her dad being a recovering alcoholic and all. Recovering, not former, because it’s not like the compulsion just goes away the minute you decided to sober up. It never does.

Is that what it’s like for Daryl?

“At least you’re _tryin’_ ,” she says. Daryl scoffs.

“The hell you defending me for? I know what I did, and there ain’t no comin’ back from it.” 

“Did you have a choice?” she asks. When Daryl just stares at her, she pushes on. “Did you _choose_ to be like this? Is it what you wanted?”

Daryl—again, it’s hard to tell with the shades in the way, but she thinks Daryl looks caught off guard. Like no one’s ever thought to ask him this question. Like he never expected them to.

“Nah,” he eventually says. “But I coulda ended it. I didn’t. Was too much of a fuckin’ pussy to try.”

Oh. So he’s felt like she has. Maybe he didn’t slice his wrist open with a jagged piece of broken glass, but he at least thought about doing something like that. At one point or another, he stopped wanting to be here, too.

Could be that he _still_ doesn’t wanna be here, Beth thinks, and almost reaches for his hand. But then she draws up short, and holds her own hand tighter instead. 

“So you can—you can die? You’re not, um—immortal?”

“Guess that depends.”

“On what?”

“On whatchu mean by _immortal_. We don’t die’a old age or nothin’—’least, not that I seen. Damn hard to kill, too. But you knew that already, huh?”

“Yeah,” Beth says faintly, still a little stuck on the whole _not aging_ thing. It’s not as if she wasn’t expecting it, but… _still_. “Guess I did.”

“It ain’t all that different than the movies,” Daryl goes on, like he’s talking about the weather and not instructing her on exactly how to kill him. “S’gotta be the heart or the head. Don’t gotta be a wooden stake or nothin’; that’s bullshit. Get us in the heart or the brain, an’ that’s it. Lights out.”

 _Lights out._ “Is there, um.” Beth untangles her fingers and twists them back together again, squeezing tight enough to hurt. “Are there any, uh, _nonlethal_ ways of defending myself? If I, uh. If I had to?”

“Girl,” Daryl says in a tone of voice that puts her intelligence into serious question, “one’a us comes at you, you’re gonna _hafta_ aim to kill, you wanna walk away alive.”

Beth gets a cold chill, but she does her best to ignore it. She’s not budging on this. “Is there a nonlethal alternative or not? Do crosses work?”

For a second, she doesn’t think he’ll budge, either—but then he does, grudgingly. “Yeah. So’ll a pentacle if that’s what you believe in. That’s the thing, though—no matter what it is, you gotta believe in it. An atheist could stick a cross in my face an’ it wouldn’t do shit, ’cept maybe piss me off.”

Well, at least she’s got that going for her. She’s had her faith badly shaken more than once over the last few years, but she’s always come out of it believing in _something_. Hopefully, that’ll be enough.

“Okay.” She nods. “Thank you.”

Daryl frowns behind his sunglasses. “What the hell for?”

“For trusting me. With—with all of it.”

The bitter smile from earlier makes a brief reappearance, there and gone. “Don’t got much of a choice, do I?”

“Sure you do. You coulda told me that I didn’t see what I thought I saw. You coulda—you coulda _made_ me believe it.”

It doesn’t really hit her until she says it out loud—how easily he could have made her forget. All he would’ve had to do was fix her with those quicksilver eyes and _will_ her into forgetting, and that would’ve been that. She wouldn’t’ve even known the difference.

And make no mistake, that scares the hell out of her—but what scares her even more is that she can’t decide whether she would’ve preferred it if he had.

“Yeah,” Daryl says, pulling her out of her internal spiral. “Yeah, I coulda. But I don’t do that shit.”

By that, does he mean he never _has_ done it, or that he doesn’t do it anymore? Should she ask? Maybe not.

“That all you wanted to know?”

A wry smile tugs at her mouth. He doesn’t sound too excited at the prospect of more questions, but she knows he’ll answer if she asks. He said he would, so he will, even if he doesn’t enjoy it.

The thing is, she’s kind of at a loss. She shifts in her seat—her butt’s starting to fall asleep—then says, “No, I—I guess that was it.”

Daryl looks unconvinced. “Yeah?”

Well, come to think of it…Beth gnaws on her lower lip, literally chewing it over. “It’s just—I don’t wanna be rude.”

Daryl just settles himself back against the seat and arches and eyebrow at her. “Shit or get off the pot, Greene.”

 _Urgh_. “When exactly—when exactly were you born?”

His other eyebrow rises to join the first. “That it? You jus’ wanna know how old I am?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Daryl crosses his arms. Taps his thumb against his bicep. “M’ thirty-nine.”

Beth feels her eyes go wide, and wishes that _she’d_ thought to bring along a pair of sunglasses to hide behind. “You—really?” _That’s it?_

“Uh-huh. ’Course, we didn’t keep real good records back then, so I can’t say for sure. But thirty-nine’s close enough.”

Wait a minute— _back then_? Beth frowns at him. “Are you messin’ with me?”

“Little bit,” Daryl admits. His lips twitch when Beth crosses her arms and huffs. “I was born in 1868. I think.”

He _thinks_? Beth falls back against the seat with a soft _thwump_ , staring sightlessly out the windshield. That’s only three years after the end of the American Civil War. There’s no one left _alive_ who was born in 1868.

“That was…a while ago,” she says, and now Daryl huffs, only she thinks he might be laughing. Probably at her.

“Yeah. You’re tellin’ me.”

Beth can’t think of what else to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything at all. She just continues to stare out the windshield, only remembering to blink when her eyes start to burn. A kid in yellow overalls trips over the raised playground border, and a man in a Georgia Bulldogs cap runs up to fuss over him. It must not be serious, because only a minute later, the man’s sending his son off with a hug.

“It ain’t just ’cause I was scared’a hurtin’ you.” It’s abrupt—so abrupt that it makes Beth jump. She turns to look at Daryl, only to find that he’s the one who’s staring out the windshield, now. “That ain’t the only reason I wanted to do this here.”

“Yeah? What’s the other reason?”

He grips the bottom of the steering wheel, muscles standing out like cords of rope beneath his skin. “Didn’t want ’im sneakin’ up on us.”

 _Him?_ “Is this about—” Her throat clicks when she swallows. “Are you talkin’ about the person who hurt you?”

Daryl nods, tightly. His biceps flex, but Beth’s not really in the right frame of mind to appreciate the view.

“Was it another—” She cuts herself off. So far, she’s avoided saying it. Like part of her’s still resisting her new reality, like it won’t be completely real until she puts it into words.

“Was it another vampire?”

Reality doesn’t fracture when she says it, because of course it doesn’t. If that was going to happen, it would’ve happened a while ago, probably when Daryl first flashed his fangs at her. It’s just a word. 

Just a word.

“’Course it was,” says Daryl. “You think a person coulda done that to me an’ walked away?”

 _Person_ , he said, not _human_. Does he not think of vampires as people? Does he not think of _himself_ as a person?

“Are there—” She considers checking over her shoulder, then decides that if someone really is watching them, she should probably do her best to _not_ look suspicious. “Are there others? Around here, I mean.”

“Weren’t before.” Daryl’s mouth twists like he tasted something sour. “He followed me.”

So that’s not helpful at all. “ _Who_ did?”

It comes out snappish, and she expects Daryl to snap back in turn, but he doesn’t. He pushes up his sunglasses, and he looks right at her. He lets her see the fear and regret and _anger_ in his eyes.

“My brother.”

Beth’s mouth pops open. All she can think to say in response is, “You have a brother?”

Daryl scowls at her. “S’what I just said, ain’t it?”

“You’re sayin’—” Her breath’s coming high and thin. She hopes, distantly, that she’s not about to start hyperventilating. “You’re sayin’ your brother did that to you.”

Daryl’s scowl softens a little. He nods.

“But how could he _do_ that? He’s your _brother_.”

Daryl looks _uncomfortable_ , of all things. “He wasn’t tryna kill me or nothin’,” he says, like that’s any kind of defense. Like it’s not so bad if his brother didn’t _mean_ to kill him. “I jus’ wanted ’im gone, but he wasn’t takin’ no for an answer. It got ugly, I kicked his ass, an’ he left.”

Beth thinks of Daryl’s abdomen, torn to bloody ribbons, and feels momentarily sick. “ _You_ kicked _his_ ass?”

Daryl’s lips twitch, but maybe Beth just imagined it, because in the next second, they’ve formed a line so severe that she can’t ever imagine them smiling.

“That’s the thing, though. He’s gonna come sniffin’ around again, same as he always does, an’ he’s gonna know you was there.”

“ _How_?”

“How the hell else? He’ll smell you.”

Beth’s extremities go instantly numb. “Oh,” she says faintly, and then shakes herself out of it. “Your sense of smell’s that good?”

“Gotta be, don’t it?” He sounds very matter of fact, but Beth can tell from his body language that he’s feeling anything but. “I cleaned up best I could after you left, but I can still tell you been there. An’ if I can, so can he.”

Beth processes this, and then asks what she figures is a pertinent question. “Is he gonna kill me?”

Daryl looks her hard in the face. “I won’t let ’im. An’ you can’t let ’im either, Beth. He comes after you, you gotta make sure you’re the one who walks away, you got me?”

Her ears are ringing. “You’re telling me to kill your brother.”

He looks away. “He ain’t been my brother in a long-ass time. Not in any fuckin’ way that counts.”

Well, _that_ sure sounds like one massive can of worms. She’s probably better off not prying at the lid, but if Daryl’s brother is gonna come around looking to kill her—or worse, any member of her family—then she figures he owes her _some_ details.

“What does he even _want_ from you? Why won’t he leave you alone?”

Daryl’s hands squeeze the steering wheel, and Beth thinks of those hands in a fight, tearing into his brother’s stomach and giving as good as he gets. How much of the blood on the ground that night was Daryl’s, and how much was his brother’s?

“He…wants me to be like him, I guess. Thinks I’m goin’ against the _natural order_ or whatever the fuck, not killin’ folks. I been telling him to fuck off for years, an’ sometimes he leaves me be for a lil’ while, but he always comes back.”

Daryl meets Beth’s eyes, and there’s nothing but resignation in his when he says, “He ain’t gonna give up till one’a us’s dead.”

And Beth—Jesus, but Beth has no idea what to say to that. To any of it. She can tell that Daryl doesn’t relish the idea of killing his brother, but who would? Even if his brother’s as awful as Daryl makes him out to be—and Beth believes that he is—that’s still his _brother_. If Shawn were to crawl out of his grave and start slaughtering their own, could _Beth_ kill _him?_ What about Maggie? Glenn? Her dad?

She doesn’t know how to make Daryl feel better. Doesn’t think she _can_ , so she turns to good old pragmatism instead. “How would I—how would I go about fightin’ him off?” And she’s not just talking crosses and holy water, either.

Daryl doesn’t relax, exactly, but Beth thinks he might be grateful for the change of topic. “We can’t get into people’s houses ’less they invite us, so if some redneck in a wifebeater turns up on your porch, don’t ask ’im in.” 

So that’s true too, huh? “Anything else?”

“I’ll get you some stuff.” Daryl doesn’t elaborate on what he means by _stuff_ , but Beth assumes that, whatever it is, it’s gonna be pointy. He clears his throat. “You, uh, ready to go home?”

Home. Home is _normal_ , and now that she’s been burdened with some decidedly _para_ normal knowledge, she’s not sure she belongs there. Of course, she hasn’t felt like she’s belonged in a while, so it’s only more of the same, really.

“Yeah. Guess I am.” She buckles her seatbelt and turns the radio back up, then shoots Daryl a smile that’s only a little bit forced. “Hey. How _do_ I smell, anyway?”

She expects Daryl to scoff, or to tell her to fuck off, or maybe even play along and say that she definitely doesn’t smell like a fresh spring daisy, if that’s what she’s asking.

But he doesn’t do any of those things.

What he does is freeze in the act of putting the truck into reverse, and slowly, almost like he’s doing it against his will, turn to look at her. And his eyes. His eyes are _stricken_.

Not just that, though. Not just that.

His lips part, and he takes a breath like he’s gonna talk, but—no. That’s not what he’s doing.

He’s _inhaling_ , through his nose and his mouth. His nostrils flare, and his pupils flare with them, and for a second—just a split second—Beth could swear that his eyes flash silver.

“Good,” he says, and Beth—

Beth flushes hot from her scalp to her toes, tingling all over as a thick, wet, _embarrassing_ gush of fluid soaks right through her panties and into her jeans. Because Daryl. When Daryl spoke just now, he sounded like.

Not that she’d know all that much about this kind of thing, but, swear to God, Daryl sounded like he’d just been having sex, and that he was looking to have more of it. With _her_.

His nostrils flare again, and this time—this time, his eyes _definitely_ flash silver.

Beth looks away with a gasp, heart pounding in her ears and her throat and down deep between her legs. She wants nothing more than to curl up into a ball and become one with the upholstery, but—no. That’s a lie. There _is_ something she wants more than that, but she’s not gonna get it. No.

Oh, God, she thinks, practically sizzling with humiliation. If he can smell the blood in her veins, that has to mean he can smell _other_ things, too. He’s gotta know. He has to.

But if he does, he’s not doing anything about it. He puts the truck into reverse, is what he does, and backs out of the parking space. He drives out of the gravel lot and onto the road. 

Beth crosses her arms over her stomach and tries very hard to make herself as small as possible, wishing the window was rolled up so she could press her overheated forehead against the cool, tempered glass. But then again, maybe it’s a good thing it’s open. Maybe the fresh air filtering through the cab will keep her smell from overwhelming Daryl’s senses.

It hits her, then. Is that why he rolled down the windows in the first place? So the smell of her blood wouldn’t plug up his nose like the scent of a meal he can’t have?

She dares a sidelong peek at Daryl. His sunglasses are back in place, shuttering his eyes. His hands are holding the steering wheel so tight she’s surprised he hasn’t torn it clean off the dashboard.

She looks down. Looks at her own hands.

They’re shaking. She’s shaking all over, but not with fear.

She swallows.

No.

Not with fear.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S/O to Maj for looking this over. She's the real MVP.

Glenn’s at work and won’t be home for another few hours; Maggie’s driving their dad to his weekly AA meeting and won’t be back for a while, either; and Beth is taking advantage of her day off to be as staggeringly unproductive as humanly possible.

And it doesn’t get much more _unproductive_ , she thinks, than curling up on the couch like an oversized slug and staring listlessly at the TV while a manic QVC host with a spray-on tan extols the virtues of a very expensive blender that also functions as a whole food juicer, a food processor, a stick blender, a hand mixer, an ice cream maker, an ice crusher, a meat grinder, a chopper, a cheese grater, and a hot soup/sauce maker. The woman’s blindingly white smile looks like it’s been painted on and never quite reaches her eyes, and Beth’s tempted to call the number flashing across the bottom of the screen just so she can ask her if she’s being held against her will.

She should probably get up and clean her room or something, but it’s broad daylight and stiflingly hot even with the air conditioning turned up to full blast, and for all that she’s barely slept a wink since Daryl told her about his bloody family history, she’s more immediately concerned with sweating to death than she is with getting her throat ripped out by her crush’s evil undead brother. At least the second option would be quicker. She can’t move an inch without her thighs sticking together like sheets of flypaper, for crying out loud.

On second thought, maybe she shouldn’t have tempted fate, because she’s just worked up the energy to grope around for the remote control and change the channel when a big dark blur flashes in her periphery, there and gone like a mirage summoned by the miserable heat.

Beth drops the remote; it bounces off the couch cushion and lands on the hardwood floor, battery lid popping off the back upon impact. The loose Rayovacs go rolling out of sight beneath the coffee table, but Beth doesn’t drop to her knees to search for them. She doesn’t move at all. 

Wait, no, lie. She _does_ move, head turning slowly on her neck. She turns her head and looks out the window.

Her heart stutters, then slows. There’s nothing out there—or at least, there’s nothing there that _shouldn’t_ be there. Just grass that needs cutting and a fence that needs mending and the gray bulk of the barn in the distance. If she truly saw anything at all, it was probably just a bird.

Just a really big bird.

Her bare toes twitch against the floor, and after a moment’s hesitation, she stands up and walks over to the window, moving lightly on the balls of her feet like she’s treading on thin ice at high noon. But it isn’t high noon, and even if it was, the sun just moved behind a cloud, shadows washing out the bright colors of the day. Where the air conditioning wasn’t enough before, now it’s almost too much, and Beth hugs her arms to her middle as she fights off a shiver.

She doesn’t even know why she bothered getting up for a closer look; she’s never needed glasses, and aside from the dimming sunlight, the landscape is unchanged. Grass, fence, barn. No birds, though. Not even a cat or a buck or a runaway steer.

Her eyebrows pull together in thought. Was Otis supposed to come over today? She can’t remember—when she’s not working, the days of the week tend to blur—but she has a feeling that the answer’s _no_. She could always call him and ask, but she doesn’t want to bother him over nothing.

 _If_ it’s nothing. And if it’s _not_ nothing, then Otis isn’t the person she should be calling for help.

She pats around blindly for her phone, half convinced that something will appear in the window and press a sneering face to the glass if she looks away even for a second—only to come _this close_ to dropping it like she had the remote when a discordant crash echoes through the empty house and nearly sends her jumping out of her skin.

What the _hell_ was _that_?

She grips her phone with sweaty fingers and swivels on her heel, looking all around the living room even though part of her already knows that she won’t find any answers in here. The source of the crash was too far away. It came from the other side of the house.

As she stands there, locked in place with her heart beating painfully in her ears, it occurs to her that _crash_ might be the wrong word for what just happened. The sound was too sharp, too bright, too brittle. Like—

Like glass shattering.

She sucks in a breath, then sprints into the kitchen. What she finds there draws her up short.

It’s not what she was expecting. There’s no pile of glass strewn across the floor; no holes gaping in the windows to let in the day’s hot, stale breeze. She’d forgotten; last winter, at Glenn’s insistence, they’d had new windows installed after years of putting it off. Tempered glass. Not so easily broken.

They _can_ be damaged, though—they can even break, if hit hard enough—and it’s with a sinking feeling in her gut that Beth takes in the spiderweb cracks that branch across the window over the sink. It looks like someone threw a rock at it.

Or like someone with superhuman strength hit it with the side of their fist.

Something catches her eye, and she walks closer, still treading lightly as if to avoid cutting her feet on shards of glass that aren’t there. Is it just her, or do the cracks in the glass look darker than they should? Could that be blood running through them?

She never gets close enough to find out. Instead, she stops in her tracks and drops her phone for real—on her _foot_ , dammit, that _hurt_ —when the chime of the doorbell barks in her ears like a clap of thunder.

“ _Shit_ ,” she hisses, flexing her sore toes and pressing a hand to her galloping heart. Her phone bounced off her foot and skittered several feet across the floor before butting up against the kitchen island, and she kneels to grab it and check for cracks in the screen. Luckily, it seems to have fared much better than the window. And her foot.

Whoever rang the doorbell rings it again, following it up with a sharp knock. Did somebody order a package that needs to be signed for? No. No, they would’ve warned her if they had.

Maybe it’s just a Jehovah’s Witness. Granted, that wouldn’t be much of an improvement over a hostile creature of the night, but at least those people aren’t _literal_ bloodsuckers.

Yeah, okay. Suppose she’s right, and it really _is_ some guy in a dry-cleaned suit looking to convert her. Then what about the broken window? Is it unrelated? Did a bird hit it?

Beth presses her phone to her heart and ventures down the hallway, wincing every other step and trying to stay out of sight of the windows. When she gets to the front door, she stops. They don’t have a peephole, and there’s no way for her to see who’s there without _them_ seeing _her._ The only way to know for sure is to open the door.

 _We can’t get into people’s houses ’less they invite us_. That’s what Daryl told her. Do welcome mats count, or do they need a verbal invitation? She probably should’ve asked him to clarify that.

Beth tilts back her phone, taps out a quick message, and hits send. She circles back to the living room, picks something up from the coffee table, and holds it in her hand for a moment before sticking it down the back of her shorts. It bites into the small of her back with every step she takes down the hallway, but she’d rather be uncomfortable than unarmed.

She yanks the door open with a little too much force, and the man standing on her front porch looks up from studying his boots to flash her a friendly smile. His teeth are dull and yellowed with nicotine stains, and when he talks, it’s in the hardened rasp of a lifetime smoker.

“Well, hey there, lil’ missy. Your folks home?”

If Beth hadn’t already been on red alert, _that_ line would’ve set off every last one of her stranger danger bells. “Yeah, they are. Can I help you?”

Her voice comes out high-pitched and strained, and she curses herself internally when the stranger on her porch arches patchy gray eyebrows at her. She’s full of shit, and he knows it. God, she is so _screwed_.

He ignores her rather pointed question and makes a show of looking around, scratching idly at his stubbly chin. He’s got a pair of aviators perched on his shaved head, watery blue eyes squinting in the fingers of sunlight that breach the shade of the porch. The clouds are beginning to clear.

“That right?” he drawls. “You sure ’bout that? ’Cause I don’t see no cars 'round here.”

Beth grips her phone tight enough to make the plastic creak, but it’s still and silent in her hand. Her message hasn’t been answered yet. “We keep ’em parked in the barn. Don’t want the paint fading in the sun.”

The man’s still smiling. He hasn’t _stopped_ smiling since Beth opened the door. His yellowed teeth aren’t any sharper than they ought to be, but Beth knows from experience that that could change in an instant.

“Must be a real nice paint job,” is all he says.

“Yeah. It is.” She tries not to be conspicuous about it when she peers over his shoulder, but if he got here in a car, she doesn’t see one parked in the driveway. Doesn’t see one anywhere at all. Again, she asks, “Can I help you?”

The man snaps his fingers, squinting blue eyes lighting up like he’s only just remembering something. “Shoot, right. Sorry ’bout that, sweetheart. Got a lil’ distracted there.”

Beth just crosses her arms, the hard edges of her cell phone digging into her bicep. She doesn’t say a word, but the man’s toothy smile doesn’t falter once. He hikes his thumb over his shoulder.

“See, my ride broke down up the road a ways, and I was wonderin’ if I could borrow y’all’s phone for a minute, call the tow truck.”

Beth frowns. “You don’t have a cell phone?”

“Lost it a while back,” the man says without missing a beat. “Never did get around to replacin’ it. Jus’ my shit fuckin’ luck, huh?”

Beth pinches her lips together. The more he talks, the closer she looks at his face, the more she can see the resemblance. She knows who this is. Part of her knew the instant she saw that dark flash in the corner of her eye.

_So if some redneck in a wifebeater turns up on your porch, don’t ask ’im in._

“Yeah,” she says, several seconds too late. The heat of the day’s blowing in through the open door, sticky and stifling, and she can feel the sweat rolling down her temples in a slow, agonizing drip. “That’s too bad.”

His smile flickers. Briefly, but Beth sees it. “So?” 

She hugs her arms tighter to her chest and shifts from foot to foot. Her toes throb dully. “So, what?”

“So, you gonna be a Good Samaritan and lemme borrow your phone for a hot minute?”

He attempts to meet her eyes when he asks this. Beth swallows tightly and focuses with careful deliberation on the bristly curve of his jaw. 

But, right. Her phone. It’s still pinching at her bicep, growing warm in her sweaty grip. She doesn’t have to let him inside to use the landline; she can just hand him her cell phone over the threshold. Maybe he’s just here to scope her out. Maybe he was just curious. Maybe she’s wrong about him and he’s not who she thinks he is, after all.

Yeah. And maybe he doesn’t need an invitation to get her. Maybe he’ll wrench her arm out of its socket the second she reaches across the threshold and pull her right into his bristling teeth.

She swallows. “No.”

His smile doesn’t just flicker this time; it slides right off his face and falls to its death. A quick glance reveals that his eyes are still blue, but they’re looking less and less human by the second, and Beth knows down deep in her gut that she wasn’t wrong about him. He’s exactly who she thinks he is.

“No?” he echoes, flatly. She can’t tell if he’s requesting clarification, or if he just can’t believe what he’s hearing. Like he took one look at her, young and small and skinny, and immediately decided that she couldn’t possibly have much in the way of spine.

She sticks out her chin. He can’t get her. So long as she doesn’t cross the threshold or invite him in, he can’t get her.

She tries not to think too hard about all the ways he could _force_ her outside, starting with the lighter he probably carries around to help feed his obvious nicotine addiction. She can’t hide in a house that’s burning down around her.

But that’s a problem for future Beth. “You heard me. No. You can’t use my cell phone.”

He cocks his head to one side, the movement oddly serpentine. He seems to be assessing her with fresh eyes. “Now, that ain’t real hospitable of you.”

“You’re right. It isn’t.” She swallows again, and she’s certain she’s not imagining the way his eyes trace her flexing jugular. It’s not the same as when Daryl looked at her throat. No, not at all. “Now get off my property.”

He sticks his hands in his pockets. His nostrils flare, and when his smile returns, it’s not nearly as friendly as it was before. “Or what?”

Beth uncrosses her arms and tucks a hand behind her back. Her phone’s buzzing, but she’s too busy grabbing the base stem of the cross she tucked into her shorts to notice. It’s carved from roughhewn wood and sharpened to a wicked point on one end, defense and offense both, and when Daryl held it in his hand, nothing had happened. His skin hadn’t sizzled like she was half expecting, and he hadn’t flinched. He hadn’t flinched, until he handed it over to her.

Because the second she’d curled her fingers around it, he’d taken a massive step back and averted his eyes like looking at her was as good as looking directly into the sun.

When she sticks it in his brother’s face, he doesn’t take a step back. No, he _stumbles_ back like she punched him square in the nose, and his blue eyes flash silver, fangs snapping down from his gums. They’re whiter than the rest of his teeth, shining like polished bone, and it takes everything Beth’s got to choke back a whimper.

“I told you once,” she says, and even though her voice is shaking with the tears she won’t shed, she can feel the power in it. She can feel that power crackling in her fingers where they touch the cross and swelling up through the floorboards and into her legs, boiling in her stomach like water on a hot stove. When she speaks again, it’s in a voice that’s too big to be just hers. “I’m not gonna tell you again. _Get the hell off my property_.”

The force bubbling inside of her surges outward with an audible crack, and Daryl’s brother doesn’t just stumble this time; he _falls_ , skidding backwards down the steps leading up to the porch and landing in a heap in the dirt. Beth stands over him with the cross held out like a shield, trembling from the shock of it.

_What the hell just happened?_

Whatever it was, Daryl’s brother doesn’t stay down for long. He climbs slowly to his feet and dusts himself off, fangs sheathed, blue eyes looking at her like he’s only just really seeing her.

“Shoot,” he says. “Guess my baby brother taught you a thing or two, huh? He must really like you a lot.”

Beth doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t lower the cross, either.

He cups his jaw in one hand and rubs his chin, thumb rasping at the stubble. “Guess I can see why. You’re a spunky lil’ thing, ain’t ya? He bite you yet?” 

Beth shivers—she can’t help it—and Daryl’s brother hacks out a rough smoker’s laugh, eyes lingering on her neck.

“Nah,” he decides. “Guess not. S’only a matter’a time, though, I can tell you that. He’s been drinking cold blood outta a fridge for too damn long, and honey?” He runs a pale tongue over his thin lips, saliva glistening on his teeth. “You are too goddamn tempting.”

The shiver settles in her bones and lingers, making her voice waver when she says, “Just go.”

Daryl’s brother doesn’t go. “What? Y’ain’t even gonna tell me your name first? What the hell happened to good ol’ southern manners, huh?”

Beth’s good southern manners went the same way as her southern hospitality the second a vampire turned up on her porch looking to stir up shit, but she doesn’t tell him that. This guy may be a monster, but she’s met plenty of human men just like him. She’s not about to encourage him with a response.

Not that guys like this one have ever required much in the way of encouragement. “No? Guess I’ll jus’ have to call you cutie pie for now. Name’s Merle, cutie pie. I’m your boyfriend’s big brother, an’ I want you to tell ’im somethin’ for me.”

“Tell him yourself.”

Merle shakes his head. “You fuckin’ kiddin’ me, sweetheart? Boy just about ripped my fuckin’ guts out through my nose the last time I tried. Nah. He likes you a whole helluva lot better’n he likes me, so you’re gonna be the one to tell ’im.” 

Merle makes a pistol with his thumb and forefinger and points it right at Beth’s heart. His eyes avoid the cross in her hand, focusing just left of her face instead. “You tell that boy I’m the least of his fuckin’ problems now.”

Beth’s insides give an odd twist, but before she can tell him to cut the cryptic shit and _leave_ already, he turns around and leaves on his own. She watches him go without blinking, watches until he disappears into the tree line, and then _keeps_ watching for a while after that. She only snaps out of her daze when she once again becomes aware of her phone vibrating in her hand, but she doesn’t answer it. Not yet.

The cross goes clattering to the porch as Beth drops into a crouch, presses her face to her upraised knee, and finally allows herself to cry.

* * *

Daryl doesn’t say anything when he gets there, although his nostrils flare and his eyes darken like a cloud just passed across them, upper lip wrinkling back from his too-sharp teeth in a silent snarl. And he _still_ doesn’t say anything when he bundles her into his truck and breaks a minimum of fifteen traffic laws driving her to his apartment building.

It doesn’t occur to her to question any of it until they’re more than halfway there, but when it does, she sits up from her slump like she’s been stuck with a cattle prod, heart giving an anxious skip.

“My folks—”

“Your folks’ll be fine.” Daryl’s voice is colder than Beth’s ever heard it—cold, she realizes, with poorly suppressed fury. “Merle’s long gone.”

She licks her lips, but it doesn’t do her much good, because the inside of her mouth’s dry as old bones. “You sure?”

If Daryl clenches his jaw any harder, he’s gonna grind his molars down to dust. “Yeah. M’sure.”

Well, he’s the one with the super-enhanced sense of smell. She’ll just have to take his word for it.

She’s silent for the remaining duration of the ride, and after that, too, as they mount the stairs to his floor and head down the hallway to his apartment. But Daryl doesn’t pull his keys out of his pocket and unlock his door like Beth was expecting him to. Instead, he turns to the door opposite and knocks.

Beth frowns at him, but his face is turned away from hers, and he doesn’t see it. “What’re you—?”

She cuts herself off with a small, startled noise when the door swings open to reveal a pale, thin woman with short gray hair and steady blue eyes. She smells like the inside of a spice cabinet, and she doesn’t look at all surprised to see them.

“Hey,” she says to Daryl. She was holding a dishtowel when she answered the door, but now she flings it over her shoulder and wipes her hands off on her jeans. She smiles at Beth, impersonal but friendly. “Is this the friend you were telling me about?”

 _Friend?_ Beth thinks, with a weirdly pleased jolt. _Daryl likes me enough to call me a friend?_ And then, stomach churning pleasantly, _Daryl talks about me to other people?_

“Yeah.” Daryl plants his hand on the doorframe and leans in close to the woman like he doesn’t want Beth to overhear what he has to say. “Can she stay with y’all for a lil’ while? I got some shit needs lookin’ into, but I don’t wanna leave ’er by herself.”

Beth’s had a pinch in her chest from the moment she caught Merle skulking around the farm, but now it gets worse. What does Daryl mean, he’s got stuff that needs looking into? Is he gonna confront his brother? After what happened the last time?

“Sure,” the woman says easily, like babysitting a total stranger as a favor to a friend is no big deal. She reaches up to brush her fingers through Daryl’s sweat-darkened hair, and Beth can’t look away even though she probably should. Part of her’s struck by how readily Daryl accepts the gesture when he usually shrinks away from physical contact, but another part of her, the part that recognizes the maternal affection in the woman’s eyes for what it is, curdles with guilty envy over Daryl having someone like this in his life when she no longer does.

She only feels worse when the woman drops her hand back to her side and smiles sidelong at her. “A friend of yours is a friend of mine.”

Daryl nods and sticks his hands in his pockets. “Thanks. I shouldn’t be long.”

The woman hums. “Make sure you aren’t. I worry about you enough as it is.” She turns to face Beth fully, and Beth can’t help but notice that even though this woman is pretty in a very fragile way, something in her eyes indicates that she’s not as breakable as she looks. “Hey. I’m Carol. You’re Beth, right?”

“Oh, um, yeah.” Beth sticks out her hand, realizes belatedly that it’s clammy with sweat, and hastily scrubs it dry on her shorts before offering it again. “That’s me. I’m Beth.”

Carol’s lips twitch, but she valiantly refrains from laughing. Beth appreciates that. “Hey, Beth.” Carol shakes Beth’s hand, her own cool and dry. “I was just getting lunch together. You hungry?”

“Oh, uh, I wouldn’t want to—”

“Impose? It’s not an imposition. Besides, I made too much spaghetti for just the two of us. I never can get the measurements right.” 

“Two of us?”

Carol’s smile widens, crinkling at the thin skin around her eyes. “My daughter, Sophia. She’s a few years younger than you, but I think you’ll get along just fine.”

Beth smiles back. It’s weak, but it’s not completely forced, either. “I’m sure we will. I, um, I’m the youngest in my family, but I babysit a lot, so. I’m used to bein’ around kids.”

“Glad to hear it.” Carol’s eyes flicker to Daryl and turn shrewd—and then she taps herself on the cheek like she’s only just remembering something important. “Shoot, I’d better go check on the stove. Come in whenever you feel like it, Beth. See you, Daryl.”

And then she’s gone, door hanging open behind her. Beth stares after her for a minute, then faces Daryl, who’s still got his hands in his pockets, head angled down to stare at the floor.

Quietly, she says, “How much does she know?”

He jerks one shoulder up and down in an uneven shrug. “Enough.”

Interesting. “Listen, I don’t wanna insult your friend, but if Merle _does_ show up, what exactly is she supposed to do?” 

“Merle ain’t _gonna_ show up.” He growls it like an angry cat, then settles a bit when he adds, “An’ Carol’s got a gun.”

Beth pictures Merle’s head exploding in a spray of gray matter and gore, and her stomach jerks like it wants to escape her body by way of her throat. “What’re you—what’re you gonna do?”

Daryl lifts his head to look at her, eyes sparking with challenge behind his overgrown bangs. He doesn’t answer her question, but he doesn’t have to.

 _Are you gonna kill him?_ The question sticks to the walls of her throat, and she swallows it back down with the rising gorge. “How’re you gonna find him? You said he was long gone.”

“I got his scent.” His nostrils flare, once. “I’ll find ’im.”

She wants to tell him to be careful—more than that, she wants to tell him not to go at all, to stay here with her and Carol and Sophia and sit down to a spaghetti lunch. She wants to tell him that it— _she_ —isn’t worth it.

But he won’t listen. He’s already made up his mind.

So she doesn’t say anything. She hesitates, then fits her hand to Daryl’s rough cheek, fingers rasping through his stubble to slide into his hair. Her touch lingers in a way Carol’s hadn’t, and she knows she’s not looking at him the way Carol had, almost like a mother. She knows she isn’t, because Daryl’s eyes widen infinitesimally when they meet hers, cheek warming beneath her palm. 

“If you get your guts ripped out again,” she says, “I’m gonna be pissed.”

Daryl’s mouth twitches up at one corner, and after a long, agonizing pause, he wraps _his_ hand around her wrist, callused fingers scraping her skin but otherwise touching her gently, so gently. His eyelids tremble, then flutter shut, when he turns his head to press his closed lips to her pulse point. His scruff tickles her, and the inner rims of his lips are soft and wet, and in that moment, Beth wants him so badly she’s miserable with it. She’s even more miserable when he lets her go.

He clears his throat, then clears it again. He’s studying the ceiling like it holds all the secrets of the universe within its myriad water stains. “I’ll be back before sundown.”

Beth’s fingers twitch. She wants to step into his arms and hold him to her. She wants to keep him here. She wants to keep him _safe_. “Promise?”

“Yeah,” he says, and the conviction in his voice is such that Beth feels like a jerk for ever doubting him. “Yeah, girl, I promise.”

“Okay. Good.”

Daryl sinks his teeth into his lower lip, loiters for another second, then turns to leave. Like she had with his brother, Beth watches him go until he’s out of sight.

Carol’s door is still hanging open, and the smell of cooking food makes Beth’s stomach gurgle like a hungry monster. She brushes her fingers over the tingling spot on her wrist that Daryl kissed—a kiss, he _kissed_ her—then heads inside and pulls the door shut behind her with a quietly definitive click.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, my dudes. I'm very excited to share not just [one](https://mygutsforgarters.tumblr.com/post/629987240413642752) but [two](https://mygutsforgarters.tumblr.com/post/636768720119857152/sweet-tooth-by-mygutsforgarters-moodboard-thanks) Sweet Tooth-inspired moodboards with you all, courtesy of **Maj** and **hungryhungrywalkers**. As always, I'm beyond flattered that people want to make fanworks of my fanwork. And thank you to Maj for looking this chapter over! 
> 
> This chapter contains references to domestic violence. Please read safely!

“So, uh. How’d you and Daryl meet, anyway?”

Beth realizes it was a dumb thing to ask as soon as she asks it, and Carol’s reaction—which is to arch her silvery eyebrows and purse her lips like she’s holding back laughter—doesn’t do much to make her feel better about it.

To Carol’s credit, she doesn’t _actually_ laugh, but her eyes are bright with restrained mischief when she says, in deceptively even tones, “Well, I _do_ live right across the hall from him. We were bound to run into one another eventually.”

Beth tightens her grip on her fork with the wistful notion that she could stab herself with it. “Right. Sorry. Stupid question.”

“You’re fine. No such thing as stupid questions, right, Sophia?”

Carol’s daughter, who’s in the middle of slurping a mountain of spaghetti off her fork, looks up from her plate just long enough to mumble, “Uh-huh.”

“No talking with your mouth full,” Carol says mildly.

Sophia makes an abashed face, and finishes chewing and swallowing this time before she says, “Sorry, Mommy.”

Beth smiles weakly, first at Sophia, and then at Carol. “No such thing as stupid questions, huh? Just stupid people?” 

Carol surprises Beth by thinking about it, looking off to one side and idly spooling threads of spaghetti around her own fork. “I suppose so,” she eventually decides. She looks directly at Beth, and there it is again—the sharp look that doesn’t suit her delicate face. “But you aren’t one of them, are you, Beth?”

Beth sits up straighter in her hard plastic chair, face heating under Carol’s assessing look. Is this some kinda test? Daryl said that Carol knows _enough_ , but exactly how much _is_ enough? Enough to worry that Beth might spill Daryl’s secret?

As if anyone would believe her.

“Well,” she prevaricates, giving Carol her best clueless Bambi eyes, “I got good grades in school, if that’s what you mean.”

If her answer threw Carol off at all, the older woman takes it in stride. “I’m not surprised. You seem like a smart girl.” Is that a compliment, or a thinly veiled threat? Beth’s still trying to decide one way or the other when Carol adds, “Daryl tells me you aren’t in school right now. Are you taking the semester off, or…?”

Beth looks down, chasing a meatball around her plate with her fork. She’s hardly touched her food. “Not…exactly. I’m pretty busy with work and stuff, y’know? I don’t really have time for classes.”

“Well, there’s no rush, right?” Beth dares to glance up at Carol and is met with the warmest smile the woman’s given her yet. “You go to school when you feel like it—or not at all. Whatever works best for you.”

Beth does her best to return Carol’s smile. It would probably even be genuine if she weren’t so worried about Daryl. “Thanks, Mrs. Peletier.”

“Carol’s fine.”

It feels kinda weird to call an adult by their first name—an adult who’s not Abe or Daryl, anyway—but Beth still says, “Okay, Carol.”

“I wanna go to college,” Sophia announces. “I’m gonna get a scholarship.”

“Yeah?” Beth asks, happy for an excuse to steer the conversation away from herself. “What schools are you lookin’ at?”

Sophia smiles shyly. Beth can tell from the feeling of displaced air around her legs that she’s kicking her feet under the table. “The University of Georgia. I wanna be a vet.”

Beth brightens, smiling for real this time. “My dad’s a vet.”

The look Sophia gives her could only be described as _starstruck_ , almost like _Beth’s_ the one with the degree in veterinary medicine. “Really?”

“Uh-huh, really.” A proverbial lightbulb goes off over her head. “Y’know, I could take you to visit his clinic sometime if you want. If that’s okay?” she asks Carol.

Carol shrugs, but the look on her face is indulgent. “I don’t have a problem with it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Sophia bounces in her seat, and a full-blown grin breaks out across Beth’s face. “My dad’s takin’ some time off from work right now, but I’m sure he’d be happy to give you a tour when he’s feelin’ better.”

“When?”

“I’ll have to check with him first, but then I’ll call your mom and ask her what time’s good for her, okay?”

Sophia nods, beaming. “Okay! Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Beth finds that her food goes down a little easier after that, and when Sophia skips off to the living room to watch cartoons, Beth stays behind, sipping the dregs of her cola and helping Carol gather up the dishes.

Carol waves her off. “Oh, you don’t need to do that. You’re a guest.”

Beth doesn’t put her dirty dish down. “But I wanna help.”

Carol’s mouth twitches. “Twist my arm,” she sighs, and gestures for Beth to follow her over to the sink. The Peletiers don’t have a dishwasher, so Carol scrubs and rinses the plates while Beth dries. The silence that follows is more companionable than awkward, and it startles Beth when Carol breaks it.

“You wanted to know how Daryl and I met, right?”

Beth’s hands fall still. “I mean…you’re neighbors, right?”

“Mm-hmm.” Carol rinses off the last plate and hands it to Beth, who fumbles to take it. “He was already living here when Sophia and I moved in. We’d pass each other in the halls every so often, but I don’t think we exchanged more than two words for months.”

Beth circles the dishtowel Carol handed her across the plate’s surface, wicking up moisture and trying her hardest not to look _too_ interested. “Yeah, I can imagine. Daryl’s not exactly the chatty type.”

Carol laughs, softly. “No, ma’am, he is not. Truth be told, I thought he was kind of a dick.”

Beth barks out a startled laugh, then claps a hand over her mouth in mute horror—but Carol just smirks at her. “It’s okay; you can laugh. I love that man, but he’s one of the grouchiest bastards I’ve ever met.”

Beth ducks her head to hide her lingering smile. “So what happened next?”

“My ex-husband.”

Beth sets the plate down on the drying rack a little too hard, making the ceramics rattle. _Crap_. 

“Sorry,” she stammers, but Carol just shrugs and turns around, propping her hip against the counter.

“He was a bad man.” Carol says it plainly, with all the cool neutrality of someone who’s trying very hard to distance themselves from a lot of pain. Beth would know, because that’s how her dad sounds on the rare occasions he talks about _his_ dad. “He hurt me, and I told myself I could live with that.” Carol’s jaw tightens, the first visible sign that what she’s remembering still hurts. “What I couldn’t live with was him hurting Sophia. I had to protect my daughter.”

“Carol,” Beth says quietly. “You don’t have to—”

“It’s fine.” When Beth gives her a doubtful look, she says, more firmly, “It is. I got out with my daughter, and that’s more than what a lot of people can say. I’m one of the lucky ones.”

Beth’s fingers twitch toward the stack of bracelets on her wrist, then go limp. Right. Lucky.

“He found me, eventually. They always do. I was still trying to get a restraining order, not that it would’ve made much of a difference.” Carol presses her lips into a hard, thin line. Her eyes are distant, like she’s forgotten all about Beth and is just talking to herself. “He showed up here in the middle of the night, banging on the door like he was trying to knock it down. He probably was. Think he woke the whole damn building up.” Her eyes finally cut to Beth, narrowed with a dark sort of amusement. “He definitely woke Daryl up.”

Despite herself, despite her trust in him, Beth has to repress a shiver. She’s glad she wasn’t around to see that. “And then—and then what?”

“That’s the thing: I’ve got no idea.”

“Really?”

Carol nods. “I know that I heard Daryl come out of his apartment. I know that I heard him talking to Ed, and that it got real quiet after that. I know that Ed never came back. Hasn’t even called. Whatever it was that Daryl did or said, it must’ve stuck.”

Beth hugs her crossed arms to her chest. It feels colder in here than it did a minute ago. “And you never asked?”

“Nope,” Carol says easily, like the notion never even occurred to her—or like she’s made her peace with not knowing and not asking. Her expression abruptly softens. “Daryl came by to check on us the next morning. I honestly don’t think he would’ve bothered with me again after that if it weren’t for Sophia. He adores that little girl, and the feeling’s mutual.”

That gets a smile out of Beth. “Well, can you blame him?”

“No, I guess not.” And just like that, just like flicking a switch, Carol’s back to being deadly serious. “He’s a good man, Beth. One of the best.”

Oh. So that’s why Carol risked opening an old wound to share such a private piece of her history with her. “I know.”

“He’s also the best friend I’ve ever had. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

Yeah, there’s definitely an implied threat in there this time. Beth doesn’t bristle at it, though. She has friends and family that she’d do anything for, too, and Daryl’s one of them. She understands perfectly where Carol’s coming from.

So she nods, slowly. Sticks out her chin. “Neither do I.”

Carol blinks, finally, the warmth returning to her eyes. “Glad to hear it. So. How do you feel about _She-Ra_?”

“Never seen it,” Beth admits. “But I’ll give almost anything a shot.”

Carol gives her shoulder a firm squeeze. It’s a distinctly maternal gesture. “Let’s see if you still feel that way after the tenth episode in a row.”

* * *

Beth’s pretending to be deeply absorbed in _She-Ra_ and doing her best not to check her phone every five minutes when she hears a knock on the door. She nearly jumps up from the couch, but then Carol catches her eye and shakes her head.

Reluctantly, Beth settles back against the couch beside Sophia and looks on as Carol stands up and disappears into another room. She comes back a minute later, tugging at the hem of her flannel overshirt, and Beth catches a glimpse of steel at her waistband. She remembers what Daryl said about Carol owning a gun and suppresses a shiver. She really, really hopes that Carol won’t have to use it.

Carol heads down the front hallway, and Beth sticks her hands under her thighs to keep from clenching them into anxious fists. Sophia hasn’t glanced away from the television even once, but when Beth looks at it, all she sees is a psychedelic swirl of blurry colors that leave her feeling slightly nauseous. 

What if it’s Daryl? What if it _isn’t_ Daryl? What if it’s Daryl but he’s hurt worse than the last time, hurt beyond what a refrigerator of blood bags can do for him? What if—

She flinches at the sound of clicking tumblers, heart hammering in time to those two frantic words. What if what if what if—

“Beth? Daryl’s back.”

Her pounding heart leaps into her throat even as she leaps to her feet, stumbling over to the door on clumsy feet. She skids to a halt next to Carol just in time to keep herself from falling flat on her face, bracing a hand against the wall for balance and hardly daring to believe what’s right in front of her eyes.

“Hey,” she manages, and then winces at how breathless she sounds. Daryl just nods.

He doesn’t _look_ injured. Of course, he managed to climb several flights of stairs with his guts practically spilling out, but she doesn’t see any bloodstains. No cuts, no scrapes. No visible bruises. “Are you—”

“M’fine.” Daryl sounds as gruff as ever, but it’s gruff in the usual way, not a rasp of pain.

Beth’s eyes feel really hot all of a sudden. She blinks, hard. “Okay. That’s—” Her voice breaks, and she cuts herself off. Carol presses a warm hand to her arm, and Daryl’s eyebrows pull together in a frown.

“Y’alright?”

No. No, she really isn’t. Beth shakes her head, face crumpling as the tears finally spill, and stumbles forward until she bumps into Daryl. It hurts about as much as throwing yourself at a solid wall of muscle could be expected to hurt, but she doesn’t care about that. Right now, she doesn’t care about anything except the reality of his body pressed close to hers, whole and unhurt. She grips him by the collar and stifles a sob against his shirt, forgetting that Carol’s watching them, forgetting everything but this: _He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay_.

“Uh.” She feels Daryl’s hand hovering awkwardly over her back before it settles on her elbow and grips, clumsy and uncertain. He clears his throat, and when he speaks to Carol, he sounds even gruffer than he had a minute ago. “All good?”

“I didn’t have to discharge my weapon, if that’s what you’re asking.” Daryl makes an impatient sound that Beth can feel rumbling in her own throat, but Carol just laughs. “Yeah. We’re all good.”

“Alright. That’s—good. We’re just gonna, uh—Beth.” Daryl gives her a gentle shake, and she nods to let him know she heard him, but she doesn’t lift her head and she doesn’t let go. “Y’ready to go?”

She nods again, still clinging to him, and Daryl sighs before wrapping a stiff arm around her shoulder and tucking her into his side. “Thanks,” he says to Carol. “For watchin’ out for her.”

“No problem. It was nice getting to know you, Beth.”

Beth swipes roughly at her eyes and looks up at Carol, who offers her a soft smile in return. “You, too. Say goodbye to Sophia for me.”

“Will do.”

Daryl turns to go, pulling Beth along with him. “Be safe,” Carol calls after them, and Beth assumes she’s talking about the obvious dangers until Daryl makes a strangled noise and says, “Shut the hell up.”

Beth’s face flares hot. _Oh_. Daryl nudges her the rest of the way across the hall and doesn’t _quite_ slam the door shut on Carol’s quiet chuckling.

Daryl lets her go then, much to her private disappointment. He clears his throat and nods stiffly at the couch. “Y’wanna siddown?”

She _wants_ to know what the hell happened while he was gone, but for now, she sits, crossing her legs at the ankles and folding her hands in her lap. Daryl doesn’t take a seat, and she doesn’t ask him to.

“You’re not hurt,” is all she says.

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.” Beth frowns at him, and he hunches his shoulders and scowls at the floor. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, but I’d really prefer it if you didn’t brush me off when I’m worried about you. What happened? Did your brother—did Merle try to attack you?”

“Nah.”

 _Nah?_ “Did _you_ try to attack _him_?”

A tight, grim smile is the only answer she gets. She squeezes her hands together and addresses the fanged elephant in the room. “Is he alive?”

“You mean, did I kill him?” He says it bluntly, like it’s nothing to him, but his clenched fists give him away. “Nah. Prob’ly shoulda, though.”

Beth can’t tell if she’s disappointed or relieved. Maybe a little of both. “Merle—when he came to my house, he told me to tell you that he was the least of your problems now. D’you know what he meant by that?”

“I do now.”

“And?”

Daryl sits, finally, flopping down on the other end of the couch and tipping back his head to stare at the ceiling just like Beth had the first night she was here. He doesn’t blink once.

“Merle’s got himself a gang.”

A— _what_? She’s not sure she heard him right. “What, like in _Sons of Anarchy_?”

Daryl snorts without humor. “Sure.”

Okay. Vampire bikers. That’s a new one. “Is that gonna be a problem?”

She already knows the answer to that question, but her stomach still sinks like a stone in a pond when Daryl cuts her a bleak look. “Shit, girl, what you think?”

“Are they—are they just passin’ through? They’re not gonna stay, are they?”

Daryl breaks eye contact, picking at a hole in his jeans and tugging a thread loose. “Nah. Most of us don’t stick around one place for long.” He flashes his teeth in another grim smile, too-sharp canines making dents in his lower lip. “But vampires don’t tend to jus’ _pass on through_ without leavin’ a coupla bodies behind.”

Yeah, that’s what she was afraid of. She thinks back to what he said before, about Merle trying to convert him over to his way of thinking, with near-lethal violence to back his arguments up. How he said that Merle wasn’t gonna give up until one of them was dead.

Daryl walked away from those confrontations every time, or he wouldn’t be sitting here in front of her, but, presumably, he only ever had to contend with Merle. And now that Merle’s fallen in with others of their kind, who’s to say that he won’t call them in as backup the next time he tries to _persuade_ Daryl to join up with him?

Acid rises in Beth’s throat, and she convulsively swallows it back. Even when she does, it curdles in her stomach and makes her feel sick. Daryl barely managed to walk away the last time, and that was just _Merle_. Daryl might be strong, but is he strong enough to take on several vampires at once?

And that isn’t even getting into the human casualties. Will her friends and family be counted among the bodies that Merle’s gang leaves behind?

“Can you take ’em on?” She’s talking, but she barely recognizes her own voice. It’s like listening to a recording of herself. “All of them at once, I mean.”

Daryl sighs through his nose and flings an arm over the upper half of his face, hiding his eyes from her. “I dunno. Prob’ly not. Not with them all juiced up on fresh blood.”

“Is fresh—better?”

“Fresh’s always better.” His mouth kicks up in a humorless smirk. “Blood don’t keep all that well.”

Her stomach churns some more, but she’s thinking, too, thoughts swirling like the acids in her stomach. She’s thinking real goddamn hard.

“What’re you gonna do? About your brother and his friends, I mean.”

He clenches his hands so hard his knuckles pop. “What the hell else? I gotta fight ’em.”

“You just said that you can’t take them all on at once. They’re gonna—” She feels like she’s gonna choke, but she gets the words out. Somehow, she does. “They’re gonna _kill you_ , Daryl.”

Daryl drops his arm and sits up straight, looking her dead in the eyes. She doesn’t see any fear in his, and that scares her even more. “Yeah, and? I’d rather go down swingin’ than sit around with my thumb up my ass.” 

She’s not gonna cry. She’s _not_. Not again. “I don’t want you to die.”

“ _Fuck_ , Beth.” He pounds his fist against the couch, face warping in a rictus of regret when it makes her flinch, but he keeps going, as unrelenting as a train bearing down on her at eighty miles per hour. “What the fuck else’m I s’posed to do? It’s you or me, alright? You get that? If I don’t fuckin’ _try_ , they’re gonna—”

He cuts himself off, breathing hard, but he doesn’t have to spell it out for her to understand what he means. Merle’s got her scent now, doesn’t he? And if it’s not her and her family, it’ll be someone _else’s_ family. As long as Merle’s gang is in town, someone’s gonna die, and there’s nothing she can do about it.

Or. Well.

Maybe not _nothing_.

“Alright.” She nods, once, feeling strangely calm. Her swirling thoughts have settled, and all that’s left is cool decisiveness. She knows what she needs to do.

“You’re gonna have to bite me.”


End file.
